God is a stand-up comic. Jesus is a surly, ungrateful kid. Hell is "the ultimate inner city." And Stanley Elkin is still the most mordant, acrobatic phrasemaker around: his savage ironies rat-a-tat-tat through these three interrelated stories, all about death and religion (a freeform Judeo-Christian mix), and the lousy way God has arranged things. There's simply no justice—as Minneapolis liquor-store owner Ellerbee discovers when he's killed in a hold-up and finds himself in Hell after a brief glimpse of pearly Heaven. True, Ellerbee was generous, kind, and decent, but God ("Hi. . . . I'm the Lord. Hot enough for you?") gets him anyway on various technical infractions. After a few decades down Below, Ellerbee strikes up a chumship with a newcomer—one of the holdup men who killed him. . . and went on to a long, healthy life. And the third disgruntled resident of Elkin's Hell is a cemetery groundskeeper outraged to be struck down: "I take low-cal minerals, I'm strictly salt-free. I eat corrective lunch!" And so it goes, with Elkin toying fiendishly with religious myths, ideas about death, Bible stories, Dante, and all—culminating in God's explanations of Everything ("He explained why children suffered and showed them how to do the latest disco steps") and with the revelation that Goodness has nothing to do with the way history has been arranged. Why, then, is everything the way it is? "Because it makes a better story is why"—God's an artist in search of the perfect audience. If you have a feeling that all this irreverent stuff has been done before, you're mostly right—for example, there's Bruce Jay Friedman's play Steambath (with God as a Puerto Rican bath attendant). And Elkin can't resist easy jokes (that Woody Allen makes better), can't break some of his stylistic tics that have become self-parody, and can't put his fragments together in a way that really builds up a satisfying whole book. But his imagination is often a creepy marvel—especially in a voice-from-the-grave cemetery sequence—and his wordplay at its best is both thought-provoking and hilarious. Spotty, minor work, perhaps—but flash after flash of real brilliance.
Pub Date: June 12, 1979
ISBN: 1564783421
Page Count: 162
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1979
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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