Drizzt Industries ticking over nicely.
Second entry in Salvatore's latest fantasy trilogy (Timeless, 2018, etc.) set in the Forgotten Realms and featuring Drizzt Do’Urden, his iconic dark elf.
Centuries ago, in this matriarchal, demon-infested world, Zaknafein, champion of House Simfray in the Underdark city Menzoberranzan, fatefully encountered houseless reprobate Jarlaxle, founder of the mercenary company Bregan D'aerthe. Later, Zaknafein sired Drizzt and subsequently died saving him. This thread forms a backstory to the entire Drizzt saga. Meanwhile, in the present, Zaknafein lives again, but revived by whom, and why? Zaknafein brought with him a whole raft of prejudices, shared by the unenlightened matriarchs of the city, that Drizzt, with his dwarf and elf friends and human wife, finds difficult to deal with. Still, along with Jarlaxle, they'll make common cause against said machinating matriarchs, an invasion of demons, and the intrigues of Lolth, the monstrous Demon Queen of Spiders. The ending will raise eyebrows high. Some books in the series, like this one, resemble novelized episodes in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, where the setting originated and to which the series owes a large part of its appeal. And most contain large chunks of the Theater of the Absurd. For instance, characters in the most desperate straits—such as being surrounded by invading hordes of ravening demons, about which the unsuspecting folks back home must be warned at all costs—will find time to stop and politely bicker over who's going to do what, when, and who goes first; the demons, meanwhile, obligingly turn on each other. For susceptible readers, these aspects of the narrative form a prominent part of Salvatore's otherwise bemusing charm.
Drizzt Industries ticking over nicely.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-268863-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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