A gripping, fast-paced adventure that delivers passionate writing.
A determined Carian princess rails against a patriarchy in this debut historical novel.
At the impressionable age of 13, Princess Artemisia outruns her bewildered aides and climbs a tree to witness a great battle between the Carian and Labraundian forces in the early fifth century B.C.E. Her father, King Lygdamis, leads the Carians into combat, and at his side stands a fearless female warrior. Artemisia learns from her bodyguard, Myron, that the fighter is Persian. Persians permit women to enter into battle. Artemisia is consumed with envy, as no such allowance is given to the women of Caria. When the princess declares that she too wants a life of glory and struggle, she is told that as a girl she should know her place. From that moment on, she makes a vow to herself that she will become a satrap, a warrior ruler. When Emperor Darayavahu requests a hostage to take to Persia, Lygdamis flinches at the thought of losing his only son and instead negotiates for Artemisia to be taken in his place. So begins the princess’s journey into womanhood. Away from the confines of Caria, she develops an unblinking confidence that allows her to reason with the emperor himself. She also convinces Myron to train her in combat, in which she proves to be devastatingly skillful. Slowly, Artemisia develops the necessary talents to gain a foothold in a world where women are subservient to men. But is this sufficient for her to achieve her dream of replacing her father as king? Those familiar with ancient Greek history will know how the story unfolds. This is a riveting tale of a defiant young girl who dares to challenge patriarchal norms. Casagranda has an agility and fluidity to his writing that are particularly evident when describing combat: “Artemisia realized that her Milesian opponent was as surprised by the stumble as she was. Instead of fighting it, she moved through it, ducking down and then thrusting the tip of the blade up. It found the soft underside of the Ionian’s chin.” The urgency, rhythm, and motion of battle are captured vividly. But on occasion, the author is prone to repetition. For example, he often describes events occurring in the heroine’s peripheral vision: “A person walked into Artemisia’s peripheral view.” This isn’t off-puttingly irritating but perhaps indicative of an unseasoned writer leaning on favored words or phrases. The novel is dedicated to “all the victims of patriarchy,” and although it succeeds in depicting men as blundering and bloodthirsty rulers, there is a nagging doubt as to whether a leader such as the masterful Darayavahu would unravel emotionally and admit his failings: “You see me as all-powerful, but I’m weak….You’d think that” having an empire “would make me like a God. But it makes me a slave to one thousand masters.” Still, despite some minor weaknesses, Casagranda’s story is a bona fide page-turner that should have readers rooting for the tenacious Artemisia from beginning to end.
A gripping, fast-paced adventure that delivers passionate writing.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 417
Publisher: Sekhmet Liminal Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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