Lackluster: Duncan simply grafts on some magic to an obvious real-world historical backdrop. A series that's run out of...
Another of Duncan’s fantasies about the King’s Blades (Impossible Odds, 2003, etc.), superhumanly skillful swordsmen/bodyguards magically bound to defend their ward to the death.
Sir Wolf, he of the fearsomely scarred and twisted visage, is known as the King’s Killer, but Wolf and King Athelgar of Chivial are united only in their mutual loathing. Once Athelgar grew tired of his mistress Celeste, he banished her to a remote and supposedly impregnable fortress—yet, somehow, warriors breach the fortress and abduct Celeste. Sir Lynx, Wolf's brother, barely survives the assault. The king orders Wolf, along with young, beautiful Dolores Hogwood, a Dark Council Inquisitor (this sounds exciting, but few details emerge) with advanced magical expertise, to investigate. Dolores has her own agenda: to recruit Wolf. The warriors who abducted Celeste were huge, armed with glass swords, bedizened with gold, feathers, and jewels—and their catlike claws, fangs, and fur appear to be real! Moreover, they were transported magically across the ocean in an instant—a feat far beyond the capabilities of the Dark Council. The assailants, Wolf determines, originated in remote Tlixilia, a tropical empire that King Diego of Distlain is currently attempting to subdue. A determined expedition might form an alliance with Tlixilia against Distlain, rescue Celeste—and, Dolores speculates, make her fortune if she can learn the secrets of Tlixilian magic. Wolf knows it won’t be that easy. Lynx has already vanished, heading for Tlixilia: he’s Celeste’s bound Blade, impelled by his binding to return to her side no matter what.
Lackluster: Duncan simply grafts on some magic to an obvious real-world historical backdrop. A series that's run out of steam.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-055511-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Eos/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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