Expect graphic violence, fairy-tale magic, flights of comedy, and operatic melodrama but also genuine intimacy and tragedy.
The four-book Tale of the Shikanoko series reaches its finale as destiny has its way, determining once and for all who will be emperor of Hearn’s fantasy feudal Japan.
The hidden emperor Yoshi was a small child back in Emperor of the Eight Isles (2016) when he was forced to flee for his life with the Autumn Princess and her stepsister Kai after his uncle Daigen was named emperor. Now grown, Yoshi does not want to acknowledge his royal lineage, preferring a quiet life as an acrobat. But Lord Aritomo of the Miboshi Clan, who has been the force behind Daigen all along, receives reports that Yoshi has been sighted for the first time in 12 years. Ailing yet desperate to outlive friends and foes, Aritomo hopes that by capturing and publicly executing Yoshi he can prove portents, including drought and famine, that Yoshi is the true emperor to be wrong. Aritomo no longer trusts his vassal Masachika, who resembles both Macbeth and Iago in ambition, duplicity, and love for his wife. But if Yoshi’s claim on the throne is a threat to Daigen’s rule, title character Shika’s legendary powers are far more worrisome to Aritomo and Masachika. Over the course of the series, Shika evolved from orphan to bandit to warrior to superpowered half-man/half-beast forced to wear a magically empowered deer mask. He has been living in the Darkwood for years by the time Hina, the central character of Lord of the Darkwood (2016), manages to find him. Her tears of love help Shika remove his deer mask, and she introduces him to his son, Take, born to the Autumn Princess before her death in Autumn Princess, Dragon Child (2016). But will Shika decide to quit his self-exile, and does he have enough martial and supernatural muscle to defeat Aritomo—or to convince Yoshi to take up the mantle and rule?
Expect graphic violence, fairy-tale magic, flights of comedy, and operatic melodrama but also genuine intimacy and tragedy.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-374-53634-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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