An imaginative and entertaining, if underedited and salacious, sex-and-sorcery romp.
A witch’s persecution of her stepdaughters leaves ample opportunity for dalliances in this fantasy/romance.
Following The Scarlett Mark (2020), this second installment of Lane’s A Reign of Blood and Magic series finds the sorceress Cynara presiding over the Kingdom of Velez, where she’s hated by everyone, including her son, King Lowell. She’s known as The Ebony Queen because of her mainly black wardrobe and blacker heart. Craving more dark power, she meets with the fallen angel Daemonis, who promises to help her with a mega-spell that will precipitate Ragnarök and gifts her immediately with the power to cause storms in distant places. She deploys tempests against the three stepdaughters who have fled to far-flung lands to escape her wrath. Princess Rose gets swept overboard during a storm at sea and is saved by studly pirate Edwin Perrow. Princess Scarlett, happily engaged to Lord Nicolai Graydon, gets engulfed by a sand tornado that only abates when the war god Odin gallops across the sky to her rescue atop his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir. Princess Ruby and her handsome guardian Garrett Morris endure the worst ordeal after a snowstorm drives them into a cave that Cynara seals shut with lightning. A dayslong slog through a tunnel takes them to a shallow pool that they have to wade through, leaving them no alternative except to get naked and fall into each other’s arms. Meanwhile, back in Velez, Sister Mary Margaret (who is the princesses’ mother, Regana, in disguise) and the Lord Chancellor take time out from plotting against Cynara to have sex in church. And Cynara takes time out from witchery to fondle the manhood of her stable groom. Lane’s romantic fantasia is a talkfest with dialogue that’s sometimes tart and punchy (“You lie once, I take your tongue. Twice, you lose your arm”) but often overripe (“I’d plunder your lips right now, causing them to swell with desire, and I wouldn’t stop pillaging your lift until my rudder—”) or indecipherable (“The battle cry doesn’t spy her last breath until the soldier accepts his final mark”). Still, Cynara makes a compelling villain—a scene where she ferrets the truth out of Mary Margaret has a chilling ruthlessness—and the otherworldly effects are vivid and well rendered in this energetic tale.
An imaginative and entertaining, if underedited and salacious, sex-and-sorcery romp.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A fresh, often funny, always poignant take on the coming-of-age novel.
After a loss, a young British woman from a Ghanaian family reassesses her responsibilities.
Her name is Maddie, but the young protagonist in George’s engaging coming-of-age novel has always been known to her family as Maame, meaning woman. On the surface, this nickname is praise for Maddie’s reliability. Though she’s only 25, she works full time at a London publishing house and cares for her father, who’s in the late stages of Parkinson’s disease. Maddie’s older brother, James, has little interest in helping out, and their mother is living in Ghana and running the business she inherited from her own father. When she needs money, she always calls Maddie, who shoulders these expectations and burdens without complaint, never telling her friends about her frustrations: “We’re Ghanaian, so we do things differently” is an idea that's ingrained in her. Her only confidant is Google, to whom she types desperate questions and gets only moderately helpful responses. (Google does not truly understand the demands of a religious yet remote African-born mother.) But when Maddie loses her job and tragedy strikes, she begins to question the limits of family duty and wonders what sort of life she can create for herself. With a light but firm touch, George illustrates the casual racism a young Black woman can face in the British (or American) workplace and how cultural barriers can stand in the way of aspects of contemporary life such as understanding and treating depression. She examines Maddie’s awkward steps toward adulthood and its messy stew of responsibility, love, and sex with insight and compassion. The key to writing a memorable bildungsroman is creating an unforgettable character, and George has fashioned an appealing hero here: You can’t help but root for Maddie’s emancipation. Funny, awkward, and sometimes painful, her blossoming is a real delight to witness.
A fresh, often funny, always poignant take on the coming-of-age novel.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-2502-8252-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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