An often enjoyable story of a brave girl’s journey with a well-developed setting and characters.
A teenage girl in ancient times starts a sacred journey to become the first person ever to tame and ride a horse in Barnes’ debut novel.
In this story set in 4000 B.C.E. in what is now southeastern Europe, Naya is the 14-year-old daughter of Potis, the chief of her clan. She chafes against traditional rules, wishing for the freedom that the boys in her tribe are afforded. An encounter with a wild, red filly, which appears to telepathically communicate with her, secures the girl’s belief she’s meant for something more—but she must also convince her family. Her grandmother proclaims the quest Naya’s “soul journey,” but Potis is resistant, realizing that the horses could be a source of both great power and great danger. Naya tracks the herd through the grasslands, but just as she finds them, a young nomad named Aytal accidentally impales her with an arrow. Guilt-ridden, Aytal tends to Naya while his father, Oyuun, and younger brother race to find Naya’s clan. Eager to move the clan before winter, Potis agrees to let Aytal and Oyuun watch over the injured girl with the help of Naya’s mother, Sata; in exchange, Aytal’s brother remains with the clan as a hostage. The bulk of the story centers on Naya’s recovery and reconnection with the filly, Aytal’s sacrifices as atonement, and the forbidden feelings Sata and Oyuun start to have for each other. This impeccably detailed novel illuminates Naya’s journey on the ancient Pontic-Caspian steppe. Barnes skillfully develops key relationships in a manner that will make readers invested in the narrative. She also captures the tentativeness of romance and conflicts between traditions and other strong beliefs. As this is the first book of a planned series, some story elements are only hinted at—including a potential overthrow of Potis and Aytal’s punishment—and the book may have benefited from a bit more resolution. Also, the inclusion of 20 pages of supplemental material, showcasing the research that went into this book, seems overly extensive.
An often enjoyable story of a brave girl’s journey with a well-developed setting and characters.Pub Date: May 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73696-733-1
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Lilith House Press
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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