A sardonic, down-to-earth protagonist eases readers into a world of magic.
In this supernatural thriller, a warlock in Britain, helping the government ensnare his own kind, may have stumbled upon a revolution in the works.
Jameson Parker’s a warlock who made it out of the Dark Times as an employee of Whitehall. The era was so named after magicians, having kept their powers hidden for centuries, suddenly became territorial and starting fighting one another. Whitehall then sought warlocks to destroy, or as in the case of Parker, make turncoats to track down others. Parker’s latest case involves finding an arsonist who’s clearly been using magic to burn down 15 buildings. Parker makes headway with a basic tracking spell, which he can only use after asking Whitehall for permission. Identifying the arsonist, however, may not answer everything. Rogue magician Kaitlyn van Ives, for one, suggests that an enigmatic figure known as The Rider is truly behind all the fires. But Kaitlyn herself may have orchestrated the scheme, regardless of her goal—somehow policing the magical underworld—that’s akin to Whitehall’s. Parker soon realizes that free magicians (warlocks not under the government’s thumb) are planning to rebel by storming and overthrowing Whitehall. And they may be looking to Parker, whose insubordination makes him “a symbol of disobedience,” as the one to champion their objective. Despite brimming with magic and magicians, the novel is closer in spirit to a hard-boiled detective story. Parker’s first-person voice, for example, is relentlessly cynical, readily admitting (quite often) that he’s a “dickhead.” It’s fitting that, for Parker and the warlocks surrounding him, the supernatural is second nature. Peacock (Ghosts on the Wind, 2015, etc.), accordingly, concentrates on mystery and intrigue, and pinpointing a villain (or villains) amid multiple double crosses is what fuels the narrative. Parker mocks his “keen detective skills,” but his willingness to employ elements of the mundane world—like, say, a gun—is what aligns him with the traditional and recognizable gumshoe character. He’s even aware of his cinematic potential, blasting AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” his literary soundtrack for an inevitable Whitehall confrontation. The author ties off the story’s biggest thread but leaves plenty for Parker to resolve in future books.
A sardonic, down-to-earth protagonist eases readers into a world of magic.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-910142-01-1
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Magister Books
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2016
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
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