While this volume lacks the action sequences and high drama of its predecessors, Hearn continues to explore issues of fate,...
The third installment of Hearn's four-part series about mythical medieval Japan offers a relatively less violent hiatus while characters recover from—or succumb to—the emotional, spiritual, and political upheavals they survived in the previous episodes (Dragon Child, 2016, etc.) before they confront their destinies in the final volume.
Yoshi, the hidden emperor, is now a teenager ensconced with a band of acrobats and in love with Kai, who is carrying his child. He both recognizes and fears his destined role as emperor. Yoshi’s supporter and the series' hero, Shika, who went from orphaned noble’s son to outlaw to avenging warrior with supernatural powers in the previous volumes, is now hiding in the Darkwood mourning the death of his great love, the Autumn Princess, and unable to remove the magical deer mask created for him by a sorcerer. Without Shika’s guidance, the superhuman brothers of the Spider Tribe, born to the sorceress Lady Tora, have grown into semihuman adults whose lack of feelings makes them frighteningly amoral and powerful. The Miboshi clan’s Lord Aritomo, who supports the false emperor Daigen, mourns his closest friend Takaakira, who died after announcing that Yoshi should be emperor. Takaakira had loved and protected Hina, daughter of Lord Aritomo’s enemy, the Kuromori lord. Having escaped death herself, Hina’s journey becomes the heart of this novel as she interacts with most of the novel’s other characters either directly or indirectly. Still a child, Hina comes under the protection of Lady Fuji, who runs the pleasure boats and took in Yoshi and Kai in the previous novel. Lady Fuji hides Hina in a temple for women where the Abbess turns out to be Shika’s mother. Though Hina, who had a childhood crush on Shika, does not meet him in this novel, there are hints that their relationship may become pivotal.
While this volume lacks the action sequences and high drama of its predecessors, Hearn continues to explore issues of fate, love, moral failure, and moral redemption through characters both archetypal and heartbreakingly believable.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-374-53633-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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