A somber, atypical genre piece with resplendent prose.
In the 17th century, a teenager in a pirate-infested island town becomes an apprentice to an old man who may hold the keys to wealth and abnormally prolonged life in Erikson’s debut fantasy adventure novel.
Jack Higgins and his friends spend much of their time robbing inebriated pirates and squandering the spoils on drinking or gambling. The small group of orphans lives in a trio of caves, collectively known as Under-the-Tree. One day, when a hurricane besieges their town of Cayona on the island of Tortuga, Jack rescues an elderly merchant known as Old Kit, who’s in danger of washing away in the flooding rain. Jack anticipates a monetary reward for saving the affluent Cayona resident, but Kit instead offers him an apprenticeship—the opportunity to learn about myriad cuts of gems and earn his own treasure. Jack’s ensuing busywork with Kit’s enterprises causes the teen’s pal, Will, to compare him to an indentured servant. But soon Jack is assigned an adventure: a search for a cave containing magic stones. Kit says that an Indian sorcerer gave him stones from that cave (“tears from the moon itself”) and that their magic has afforded him a lengthy life. But now the old man is dying and needs Jack to retrieve new stones, which leads him on a surprisingly macabre and perilous expedition. Erikson’s novel primarily depicts Jack as an observer, often listening to others’ tales at length. This suits the story, in which Kit is essentially passing the torch; along the way, Jack witnesses the dark side of business, as even local merchants are a threat as they covet Kit’s treasures. Hints of romance provide relief from the dark tone as Jack pursues Rebecca Van Duyn, a local woman whom he hardly knows. But much of the rest of the narrative is grim, particularly the hunt for magic stones in the final act, which gradually turns into a surreal, sometimes-grotesque ordeal. Erikson’s writing style, however, is persistently elegant, regardless of the content: “The rainbow gleam of dragonflies eddied in and out of the shadows where the trees overhung the slow current.”
A somber, atypical genre piece with resplendent prose.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-615-95764-7
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Cascade View Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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