Suspenseful, philosophical, and inventive, this sparkling novel explores the power of memory and love.
Napoleon conquered England in this time-travel/alt-history fantasy set at the turns of the 19th and 20th centuries.
When Joe Tournier steps off a train from Glasgow in Londres in 1898, he can remember his name but very little else. He’s suffering from “silent epilepsy,” a doctor tells him, which is characterized not by the usual convulsions but by symptoms associated with epileptic auras: amnesia, paramnesia, visions. Paramnesia is “the blurring of something imaginary and something real,” explains the doctor, giving what might work equally well as a definition of fiction, particularly of Pulley’s favored fantasy genre. In the time-travel subgenre, of course, there are better explanations than epilepsy for déjà vu (“the sense you’ve seen something new before”) and its opposite, jamais vu (“when something that should be familiar feels wholly alien”). Joe’s master retrieves him from the hospital—like most people of English descent under the reign of Napoleon IV, Joe is enslaved—and takes him home to Joe’s wife, who is not the same woman as Madeline, the wife Joe believes he remembers. A postcard delivered almost a century after it’s mailed sends Joe north to the Outer Hebrides on a quest to learn about his forgotten past and perhaps find Madeline. There, he passes through a time portal into the middle of the Napoleonic War at a point when victory hangs in the balance—and when previous temporal crossings have already made that balance wobble and spin. Missouri Kite, an officer in the Royal Navy, and his sister and ship’s surgeon, Agatha Castlereagh, hope to use information and technology from the future to win the war for the British. Is it too late to change history? Can Joe help Kite and Agatha without changing the future so much that he endangers the toddler daughter he left behind in 1900—or indeed, his own existence? As scenes spiral back and forth between centuries, the book’s emotional center crystallizes around a fundamental mystery: Who, in fact, is Joe? All time-travel plots are fraught with paradox, but not all rise to Pulley’s level of tricky cleverness, and few of those trickily clever books rise to her level of emotional intensity.
Suspenseful, philosophical, and inventive, this sparkling novel explores the power of memory and love.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63557-608-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.
A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.
Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374172
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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