A taut, engaging tale that sets its diverse heroes and villains on a slow boil toward chaos.
This epic fantasy debut features a farmer summoned by destiny to aid a prince against an evil supposedly defeated centuries ago.
Aleksei Drago is a farmer of the Southern Plain. In the field one day, he begins to hear a voice in his head. “North, Aleksei,” a man’s voice says, “I have need of you.” He dreams of intense emerald eyes. Elsewhere, in a commune serving the Dark God Volos, Bael is the youngest son of Lord Father Rafael. The lad, treated like a worthless toad, lacks the gift of wielding Archanium magic that his siblings possess. When his Granny Jorna describes a prophetic vision of doom revolving around him, she says: “You just have to find the boy.” Bael’s magical talents increase and he mentally contacts Aleksei. But there’s stiff competition for the farmer’s attention, namely the green-eyed Prince Jonas Belgi of Ilyar. He stews in the capital of Kalinor, betrothed to Lord Bertrand Perron’s daughter, Eleina, to uphold an alliance. Meanwhile, Aleksei rides north, little realizing that his mother’s magical Ri-Hnon blood helps him travel “five hundred leagues in three days” and communicate with the spirit of the forest, Mother Wood. While Aleksei’s familial destiny is that of a Hunter, greater service summons him to battle against a once-banished evil that maneuvers itself free. In this series opener, McIntire beckons dedicated fantasy readers with a dazzling prologue in which a Magus named Cassian struggles to lock away the evil Kholodym Dominion while the sorcerer’s heroic lover, Richter, prepares to slay the villain if necessary. The character-driven whirlwind that follows sets up elaborate cultures and high stakes. Archanium Knights, for example, bond for life with their Magi, to the exclusion of other intimate relationships. The Hunter and the Prince’s first kiss is exceptional because “Aleksei Drago was the rare man who saw right past all of Jonas’ pretense,” making them a “perfect match.” McIntire maintains grandeur and tension throughout as Aleksei trades his youthful naiveté for worldly caution; Bael’s manipulative evil engulfs others; and soulless revenants begin overtaking the land. War and the ruin of nations await in the sequel.
A taut, engaging tale that sets its diverse heroes and villains on a slow boil toward chaos.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 651
Publisher: Black Dove Press
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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