An engaging medieval fantasy that’s also, at times, a refreshingly candid tale of desire.
In Hunt’s fantasy adventure, a queen with a secret sends away her most loyal warrior only for him to return years later.
Eleven years ago, Sir Ezra, a knight, entered the Queen’s chambers after hearing her scream in terror. His protective instinct apparently caused him to unleash a secret power—one accompanied by “a sound like ringing thunder.” The Prince of Erle, who’s the Queen’s husband, and his knights were all killed during the incident, and the Queen, whose name is Rose, sent Ezra into exile. Now, in Province, he serves Lady Kristen while struggling to keep his obsession with the Queen in check. Rachel, Lady Kristen’s 17-year-old daughter, is infatuated with Ezra; when she takes her flirtation to the next level, it again activates his hidden power. Ezra, it turns out, is an Elysian Bell—a legendary figure who can broadcast his emotions outward, which affects others in unexpected ways. Lady Kristen decides to send Ezra back to the capital as her seneschal, or steward, so that he might see Rose and receive closure. There, the knight is greeted by a female knight named Sir Marigold, an old friend, but he also finds evidence of the Queen’s rocky rule. However, a bigger surprise awaits him. Hunt combines fairy-tale romance with appealingly ribald scenes in this unique medieval adventure. When Rachel dyes her hair blond, for instance, Ezra’s “bell-like tolling” sounds, which causes the young woman to literally rip her bodice, swept away with passion. The knight’s gift eventually summons other women to his bedchambers, including shopkeeper Danielle Stonehouse, and there are lively descriptions of carnal pleasure. Balancing these moments are threats to Ezra’s life and dream sequences with ethereal passages: “He dived down...to see how deep the clean, crystalline structure went and was amazed at the endless, vertiginous expanse of ice below him.” Moments of wisdom come from Sir Marigold, who tells the girls she’s training, “Don’t try to mimic your enemies and compete against their advantage. We must find our own advantages.” Rose’s revelation to Ezra provides fuel for a sequel.
An engaging medieval fantasy that’s also, at times, a refreshingly candid tale of desire.Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-77797-343-8
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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