A gripping fantasy full of magic and heart.
In this debut novel, a talented but anguished master of fire must overcome her past failures and rally the inhabitants of a beleaguered village.
Jetta is a Firedancer, the youngest ever Third Rank master. She can tame and vanquish fire with the power of dance—from infant flames to cunning hysths and even raging outbreaks of The Ancient itself. But Jetta’s reputation is tarnished. A year ago, fire claimed the village she was assigned to protect. Her life mate was killed and Jetta herself, injured. Although recovered physically, she has lost the unshakable confidence necessary to keep The Ancient at bay. Why then has the Circle of the Fire Clans sent her and her childhood friend Setti (a mere Second Rank journeyman) to investigate outbreaks of fire in Annam Vale? Annam is home not only to Stone Delvers—a clan of giants who mine the mountains for fire-dousing containment stone—but also now to Windriders, whose presence could easily fan the flames of The Ancient. Tensions run high. Many of the Delvers welcome Jetta, but others distrust her, believing her to be incompetent or even the cause of the conflagrations that she and Setti subdue. What’s worse, The Ancient grows shrewd. Fire has evolved and no longer bows to the traditional forms of the dance. If Jetta is to save Annam, she must unite its inhabitants and overturn an entire worldview. Bolich’s impressive novel captures the best elements of fantasy writing while avoiding most of the pitfalls. This series opener, though promising further development, is self-contained, its worldbuilding unobtrusive yet substantial. The characters are complex: Jetta with her impetuous, strong will; faithful, lovelorn Setti; the ethereal Windrider Sheshan (Jetta’s romantic interest); and down through the minor players. Their conversations, though stylized to an extent, are not stilted, and the conflicts and dangers at Annam arise naturally from the scenario, not from authorial trickery or incongruous decision-making. Readers will feel Jetta’s frustrations and uncertainty (“Those tunnels full of fire haunted her. The Delvers knew nothing of fire, had no concept of the danger in leaving The Ancient fretting behind a makeshift barrier of dirt. She pictured the Old Man patting at his prison with hands of fire…searching restlessly for a way out”) and her resolve. As the dance against The Ancient grows ever more perilous, the audience will gladly journey with her.
A gripping fantasy full of magic and heart.Pub Date: March 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9989634-7-1
Page Count: 383
Publisher: B Cubed Press
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
