Fans of the previous volumes won’t be disappointed; more skeptical readers can appreciate and admire Elliott’s inspired...
Following Shadow (2015), the final entry in the innovative but opaque Pendulum trilogy.
Former London journalist Eric and Case, his alcoholic friend (now transformed into a small dragon), stumbled through a hidden doorway into Levaal, a land where gods, dragons, wizards, and other beings engage in a seemingly endless power struggle. Vous, lord of a dragon-shaped castle, has transformed himself into a sort of flower-power hippie god after—accidentally?—creating Shadow, a baffling and uncomprehending entity with weird powers…who resembles Eric. Vous’ daughter, Aziel, takes over the castle with plans to rule Levaal, though her sometime lover, Eric, has no stomach for lordship and wanders off. The dragons plot to free themselves from their prison in the sky—a sky made of glowing stone; some hunt humans for sport, others prefer to manipulate them. The vast Wall dividing Levaal North from South has fallen, allowing the humanoid haiyens to cross; one faction insists that humans able to adopt a Zen-like serenity will become invisible to the dragons; a second faction urges humans to fight them, a course most favor. The gods, personifications of things (Mountain, Tempest) or attributes (Valor, Wisdom), wake up and do, well, godlike but pointless deeds. All this isn’t the half of it. Elliott never stood a chance of controlling his creation and often substitutes explicit violence for narrative clarity. Still, he earns top marks for ingenuity and writes an attractively supple prose. While individual subplots often fascinate and beguile, even tenacious readers will look in vain for a unifying concept—witness the final scenes, which, while dazzling, bear little relation to anything that’s gone before.
Fans of the previous volumes won’t be disappointed; more skeptical readers can appreciate and admire Elliott’s inspired resourcefulness while believing nary a word.Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3190-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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