A decidedly promising start.
Set in an alternate, magical England during the Napoleonic Wars, Cho’s debut novel is at once a comedy of manners and a sharp metacomment concerning racism and misogyny in the fantasy genre.
Most thaumaturges agree that Zacharias Wythe is a most unsuitable Sorcerer Royal. Born a slave of African parents, he was set free by his predecessor, Sir Stephen Wythe, who raised him and trained him in the magical arts as a kind of experiment. Zacharias’ skin color bars him from social acceptance; moreover, he’s commonly assumed to have wrested the late Sir Stephen’s staff from him by nefarious means. Nevertheless, Zacharias strives to serve his fellow magicians by determining why the magic level in England has diminished recently. He's distracted in his quest by assassination attempts, the conflict between the sultan of Janda Baik and that nation’s witches, and the presence of Prunella Gentleman, a young woman of uncertain but presumably half-Indian parentage, who is possessed of powerful magical gifts that ladies are firmly encouraged to suppress. Many voices in the sci-fi community have spoken of the need for diversity in authors, characters, and subject matter and have faced some unpleasant public blowback for that view. In this book, Cho is both providing that diversity and directly responding to those who prefer a more traditional (read: white male) approach to fantasy. She uses wit, charm, and romance to make her point; the result is a classic, gently barbed upper-crust comedy mixed with magical thrills, modern social consciousness, and a hint of political intrigue.
A decidedly promising start.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-425-28337-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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
A somewhat fragmentary nocturnal shadows Jim Nightshade and his friend Will Halloway, born just before and just after midnight on the 31st of October, as they walk the thin line between real and imaginary worlds. A carnival (evil) comes to town with its calliope, merry-go-round and mirror maze, and in its distortion, the funeral march is played backwards, their teacher's nephew seems to assume the identity of the carnival's Mr. Cooger. The Illustrated Man (an earlier Bradbury title) doubles as Mr. Dark. comes for the boys and Jim almost does; and there are other spectres in this freakshow of the mind, The Witch, The Dwarf, etc., before faith casts out all these fears which the carnival has exploited... The allusions (the October country, the autumn people, etc.) as well as the concerns of previous books will be familiar to Bradbury's readers as once again this conjurer limns a haunted landscape in an allegory of good and evil. Definitely for all admirers.
Pub Date: June 15, 1962
ISBN: 0380977273
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962
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