A solid fantasy that wears its spirituality lightly yet effectively.
In McDemott’s (Inspection, 2013, etc.) latest fantasy novel, an embittered warrior leads a revolt against an ethereal enemy enslaving his people and finds himself in a fight for his own soul.
In the lands north of the Black Mountains, there are no free men—only slaves of the overlord Belenus, one of a race of immortals known as the Fay. He taxes the people of Dokrait into poverty, and when they fall short, he demands their children as payment. Although the hard-nosed, single-minded Keiran commands Belenus’ army, he’s no freer than anyone else; his body still has scars from floggings he received during a youth spent in the Fay’s mines. So, with his deputy and only friend, Caél, he plots a rebellion in order to lead his people out of bondage—through the country of their lifelong enemies, the Alamiri, to the Wildheath, an unsettled land that will become their new home. When Belenus pursues the refugees with an army of hobgoblins, Keiran must confront how his impulse toward expediency, rather than justice or mercy, makes him more like his foe than he cares to admit. The leader of a mysterious band of Fay known as the Others soon tells him that the only way forward is by embracing the Eternal One. The plot’s biblical echoes, with its themes of slavery, freedom, obedience and revolt, are no coincidence. McDermott (Inspection, 2013, etc.) bills the novel as both fantasy and Christian fiction, but like C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, the religious undertones are subtle enough to still engage a secular audience (although the epigraph, drawn from the Gospel of Matthew, does tip the author’s hand). No divine fire ignites the plot, but the characters are real enough, with realistic conflicts; Caél, for example, is torn between his duty to his family and to his people, and an Alamiri prisoner, Jarmith, weighs his desire to escape against his responsibility to prevent a murder. The prose also frequently achieves a gentle cleverness, as when a character quips, “I think if I throw myself on Belenus’ mercy, there will be nothing to break my fall.”
A solid fantasy that wears its spirituality lightly yet effectively.Pub Date: May 31, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: SALT Christian Press
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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