There’s not a dull moment for this fantasy’s protagonist—no matter whose daughter she is.
A young woman must prove her noble lineage in order to break a curse in the second installment of Edwards’ (The Farrier’s Daughter, 2014) fantasy/romance series.
After fleeing Castle O’Brien, Alainn wanders the streets of Galway. Though she’s secretly pregnant, openly brokenhearted, and wholly uncertain about what to do next, she’s convinced that she had to leave her lover, Killian, so he could fulfill his destiny to become a great leader. But Killian convinces her to come home and marry him despite the fact that he’s betrothed to another woman—a suitably upper-class and surprisingly likable Scottish lass. Back at Castle O’Brien, Killian’s uncle, the clan’s malevolent and all-powerful chief, forbids a union between his nephew and Alainn. He also knows about her supernatural powers, which must be protected from the grasp of dark spirits, but he promises to leave her alone if she marries another man. As their respective wedding days approach, Alainn and Killian, both hotheaded and sharp-tongued, spar over a misunderstanding. Meanwhile, her friends soon notice that she’s expecting a child. Lady Siobhan, Killian’s kindly aunt, also realizes that Alainn has an uncanny resemblance to the members of her own noble family. Despite the young heroine’s many positive qualities, including unparalleled beauty, intellect, and magical powers including mind-reading and controlling the weather, Edwards shows that she’s also driven by passion rather than logic. This tendency makes Alainn rather slow to comprehend solutions to her problems, such as a curse that’s plagued the O’Brien family for decades. As a result, readers will likely see where the story is going long before its protagonist does, but it’s an action-packed page-turner nonetheless. Alainn and Killian’s sexy romance, as described here, is worth fighting for, even if their dialogue is often over-the-top; for example, while admiring a scenic view, she tells him, in all seriousness, “I have never beheld such an astounding, impressive sight. Apart from seeing you unclothed, of course.” Although it’s set in Ireland during its tumultuous 16th century, this book is more of a romance than a historical. It touches on elements such as Henry VIII and his wives and the impending British conquest, but it does so only in passing.
There’s not a dull moment for this fantasy’s protagonist—no matter whose daughter she is.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-1460208731
Page Count: 200
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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