Despite the imperfections, Modesitt once again delivers an engrossing power struggle negotiated by a virtuous and talented...
The ninth book in the Imager series moves on some 380 years from the previous entry (Antiagon Fire, 2013).
For a century, the influence of Solidar's Collegium of Imagers has waned, due to weak leadership, lack of ambition and a willingness to contribute nothing except political loyalty in return for the Rex’s monetary support. To his own surprise, Alastar, a talented senior imager (wizard) who’s all but unknown in the capital, L’Excelsis, and has little knowledge of conditions there, learns he has been selected as the new Maitre. On his arrival, Alastar finds that imager training has languished, and senior imagers with divided loyalties have allowed factionalism and a culture of bullying to take hold among the student body. Rex Ryen, the stubborn and intemperate ruler, insists on imposing a huge tax increase on the High Holders (landowners) and factors (merchants), a demand the High Holders contemptuously disregard. Ryen angrily orders Alastar to assassinate the High Holders one by one until they comply—a command Alastar cannot obey but cannot dismiss. Neither the Rex nor the Holders consider the imagers a threat. As Alastar tries to unravel the bewildering yet overwhelmingly important tangle of politics and familial relationships that swirl around the Holders and the Rex, he learns that the army—swollen to unrealistic proportions, rebellious and itching for a fight—might intervene. And renegade imager Desyrk, with ties to both the military and the Rex’s family, threatens both the Collegium and the Rex. With meticulously wrought characters and complex, logically developed plotting that towers above the fantasy norm, it’s easy to forgive the author, here, his unusually pedestrian prose, stiff dialogue and flat-footed tendency to dwell on the nondeist religion practiced by everyone.
Despite the imperfections, Modesitt once again delivers an engrossing power struggle negotiated by a virtuous and talented man committed to achieving the greater good by way of the least harm.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7985-6
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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