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 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
BOOK REVIEW
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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