One hopes for more of Camp’s dangerous visions to spring from a city that, as he writes, “is a great place to find yourself,...
A phantasmagoric murder mystery that wails, chants, laments, and changes shape as audaciously as the mythical beings populating its narrative.
It's six years after Hurricane Katrina, and, though floodwaters have receded, New Orleans, as depicted in this boisterously ingenious debut novel, is neck-deep in malaise, its surviving citizens struggling to recover their collective mojo. Among these is a Creole busker named Jude Dubuisson, who, as the book begins, is glumly content to collect spare change from credulous tourists through his supernatural gifts for locating missing objects. The hurricane and its aftermath compelled Jude to hide his true powers under the proverbial bushel until he’s beckoned to take part in a secret card game featuring some of the city’s most powerful and dangerous demigods, including the treacherous vampire Scarpelli, a fallen angel known as “Wings,” and the voodoo high priest Papa Legba. The game takes a turn when Jude goes unconscious after being dealt a hand of five blank cards. When he awakens, Jude finds that one of the game’s participants has been murdered. Soon, everybody else taking part in the game is either murdered or about to be; other potential victims include a beguiling young hoodoo apprentice, a zombie jazz trumpeter—and Jude himself. For a first-time novelist, Camp shows adroitness in weaving the real-life exoticism of present-day New Orleans with his macabre alternate universe that’s almost—what's the word—supernatural. (Among the unique characters attending a burial service for one of the murder victims: a centaur, a hairy giant, and “a fat, brown-skinned man with the head of an elephant.”) Things only get weirder and more intense from there, but the engaging style, facility with folklore, and, above all, impassioned love for the city its characters call home keeps you enraptured by the book’s most chilling and outrageous plot twists.
One hopes for more of Camp’s dangerous visions to spring from a city that, as he writes, “is a great place to find yourself, and a terrible place to get lost."Pub Date: April 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-328-81079-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
