More of a mixed bag than hitherto, but regulars will find it hard to resist.
Final entry in Hodder’s steampunk/time travel series (The Return of the Discontinued Man, 2014, etc.) featuring Victorian explorer/translator Sir Richard Francis Burton and his improbable sidekick, the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne.
Series loyalists will recall the assassination of Queen Victoria by Edward Oxford, an insane time traveler from the 23rd century. This time, Burton finds himself, young and healthy, in 1864 but burdened by sharp memories of himself as a dying old man; Swinburne reports similar recollections. Before they have time to dwell on these matters, they climb aboard the rotorship Orpheus and proceed to the 23rd century, where the Beetle, a strange creature who exists simultaneously in multiple realities and, in some unfathomable way, is also Burton, explains that they must be transported into yet another alternate past where the Beetle’s complicated plot will knit up the strands of time broken by the mad Oxford. Pause for breath. Back in 1861, however, things immediately go wrong. Orpheus’ artificial intelligence inexplicably falls silent; following a crucial meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and genius Charles Babbage, Babbage vanishes, but the intelligent robots he invented proliferate. Worse, Disraeli intends to transfer the mentalities of the empire's ruling elite into immortal mechanical bodies and thereby ensure their supremacy forever. Soon, London's parks become concentration camps for dissidents, the state’s political enemies languish in slave labor camps in India, and Burton and Swinburne battle hordes of mechanical police. Though Hodder ties his time-travel rationale in knots, the plot makes no sense anyhow. Yet when, all too often, the occasionally brutal, sadistic action just plods, his dazzling inventiveness keeps things bubbling along.
More of a mixed bag than hitherto, but regulars will find it hard to resist.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63388-052-8
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Pyr/Prometheus Books
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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
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
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