Add a Dutch captain in flight after seducing an admiral’s daughter, a duplicitous British consul, and a rescue from a Heart...
Sending young Hal Courtney sailing the Golden Bough along the coast of East Africa, Smith (Desert God, 2014, etc.) enlists co-author Kristian to resume his swashbuckling 17th-century series featuring the Courtneys.
Angus Cochran, Earl of Cumbrae, known as the Buzzard, is a villain whose betrayal sent Hal’s father, Sir Francis, to the gallows; he himself escaped flame and cannon to wash up on Zanzibar's shores, albeit burned and missing an eye and arm. That back story is filled in as Cochran is enslaved by Maharajah Jahan, Omani Arab ruler of Zanzibar, a "cauldron of humanity where the blood of European, Bantu, and Arab was mingled" Jahan wants the Buzzard to kill Hal because Hal sailed in the cause of Christian Ethiopia against Muslim invaders. Jahan also hates Hal’s true love, Judith Nazet, a Joan of Arc–like Ethiopian general whose victories saved the Tabernacle and Holy Grail. The biblical legend is a minor element in a narrative mishmash of piracy, derring-do, and romance that becomes a hot mess of fights at sea, fights on land, murders, and arson, with heroes captured, enslaved, and sold on the auction block. Characters are black and white, not a nuance to be found, from Errol Flynn–like Hal to his wise and stoic right-hand man, Aboli, an Amadoda warrior, to a tangential antagonist named Pett, a psychopathic British East India Company clerk who appears only to up the gore factor. Rendered in a florid, verbose voice laced with flowery descriptions, the tale wanders through declarations of vengeance, hairsbreadth escapes, and pirate hideaways, leaving a trail of unrelenting violence—blindfolded fights to the death and execution by rhinoceros—all the way to Sir Francis’ treasure hidden at Elephant Lagoon.
Add a Dutch captain in flight after seducing an admiral’s daughter, a duplicitous British consul, and a rescue from a Heart of Darkness colonial gold mine, and there’s enough action to keep pages turning.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-00-753570-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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