A low-key but detailed introduction to a world of uncanny characters and creatures.
In Murphy’s debut, the first in a prospective supernatural series, people in a small town become entangled in an ongoing war between immortal beings.
At a glance, Wichita is a quiet, modest town near South Kansas City. Local truck driver Mark finally gathers up the courage to ask out Sharon, who works the counter at the one-stop shop he patronizes. Meanwhile, Mark’s friend Ron is at odds with his ex-convict brother, Tommy, who’s just finished a 15-year stint in prison. Other residents include reputedly immortal witches. Nearly 250 years ago, the area was the site of the Great War in which witches and human Hunters battled wolflike beasts called Jackals. That war officially ended, but the tension between the various beings continues to this day. Witches have tried to increase their numbers through recruitment, including reaching out to some people who aren’t aware they have witch bloodlines.Now, witches are contacting local residents, including Sharon’s parents, who may be at least part witch and have powerful abilities. Tracking down potential recruits is essential, as recent maulings of campers suggest that Riffs—vampire-Jackal hybrids—are in the vicinity and that all-out war may soon be returning to Kansas. Murphy’s novel is populated by myriad, vibrant characters with engrossing backstories. For example, Mark and his mother both suffered abuse at the hands of his alcoholic father, and readers eventually learn about the crime that sent Tommy away, which ties to other characters’ pasts. A prologue offers a hint of the Great War in 1782 and another section portrays witch recruitment in 1815, but most of the story consists of present-day characters in real-world predicaments. Frequent dialogue scenes give the narrative a consistent pace and are often informative, and although very little action occurs in this book, Murphy has plenty of material to develop in planned sequels.
A low-key but detailed introduction to a world of uncanny characters and creatures.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-55-349462-9
Page Count: 273
Publisher: Cosby Media Productions
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.
The master of supernatural disaster returns with four horror-laced novellas.
The protagonist of the title story, Holly Gibney, is by King’s own admission one of his most beloved characters, a “quirky walk-on” who quickly found herself at the center of some very unpleasant goings-on in End of Watch, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider. The insect-licious proceedings of the last are revisited, most yuckily, while some of King’s favorite conceits turn up: What happens if the dead are never really dead but instead show up generation after generation, occupying different bodies but most certainly exercising their same old mean-spirited voodoo? It won’t please TV journalists to know that the shape-shifting bad guys in that title story just happen to be on-the-ground reporters who turn up at very ugly disasters—and even cause them, albeit many decades apart. Think Jack Torrance in that photo at the end of The Shining, and you’ve got the general idea. “Only a coincidence, Holly thinks, but a chill shivers through her just the same,” King writes, “and once again she thinks of how there may be forces in this world moving people as they will, like men (and women) on a chessboard.” In the careful-what-you-wish-for department, Rat is one of those meta-referential things King enjoys: There are the usual hallucinatory doings, a destiny-altering rodent, and of course a writer protagonist who makes a deal with the devil for success that he thinks will outsmart the fates. No such luck, of course. Perhaps the most troubling story is the first, which may cause iPhone owners to rethink their purchases. King has gone a far piece from the killer clowns and vampires of old, with his monsters and monstrosities taking on far more quotidian forms—which makes them all the scarier.
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.Pub Date: April 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3797-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
BOOK REVIEW
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