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HENRY VIII: WOLFMAN

A right royal howler, in more ways than one.

The second monarch of the Tudor dynasty gets his wolf on in 16th-century London.

Yes, it’s another literary sideshow attraction, this time from journalist Moorat (Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter, 2009), who has a freewheeling infatuation with letting demons loose on the British Royal Family. The novel opens on an already-transformed Henry VIII, all feral senses and blood lust, pounding toward his castle to devour a Queen. But which one of his lordship’s ill-fated brides is about to feel the fatal bite of her husband’s ravenousness? To find out, Moorat hurls the reader back a few bygone years. In one of the few turns from the King’s true history, Katherine of Aragon has finally borne Henry a son, Prince George. But in horrible moments, a band of Wolfen led by the malevolent Malchek has torn through the castle, devouring the child, infecting Henry and earning his kingly wrath. Following is a whole lot of nonsense about shape-shifting demons from ancient Greece at war with mankind and each other, not to mention the interference of the Holy Church of Rome and its demon-hunting arm, the Pretektorate, who are in league with Henry’s advisor, Sir Thomas More. There are some fun moments, especially for followers of Henry’s bloody history, either historical or Showtime’s over-the-top soap-operatic version. But there’s also a jarring clash between the savagery of the ‘horrid bits,’ the Python-esque humor of the supporting cast (there’s even a “Graham the Wolfman,” who jousts with an agitated More) and Henry’s dubious embrace of his lupine condition. “He was drunk. He was a wolf. Life was good,” Moorat proclaims during Henry’s first joyful, intoxicated romp through the woods. Things get increasingly serious as the narrative leaps toward a massive engagement between Henry’s army and a hairy army of invaders, with Lady Jane Seymour in the mix. Whether readers will find barmy fun or a load of bollocks will largely swing on their affection for this particular transgression into royal history.

A right royal howler, in more ways than one.

Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2011

ISBN: 978-1-60598-198-7

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Pegasus

Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011

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A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE

A confident beginning with the promise of future installments that can’t come quickly enough.

A scholar of Byzantine history brings all her knowledge of intricate political maneuvering to bear in her debut space opera.

The fiercely independent space station of Lsel conserves the knowledge of its small population by recording the memory and personality of every valuable citizen in an imago machine and implanting it in a psychologically compatible person, melding the two personas into one. When the powerful empire of Teixcalaan demands a new ambassador, Lsel sends Mahit Dzmare, hastily integrated with an imago the current ambassador, Yskandr Aghavn, left behind on his last visit home, 15 years ago. Once arrived at the Empire’s capital city-planet, the Jewel of the World, Mahit faces the double loss of Yskandr: Sabotage by her own people destroys the younger Yskandr copy within her, and she learns that the older original was murdered a few months ago. Bereft of the experienced knowledge of her predecessor, she will have to rely on all she knows of the sophisticated and complex Teixcalaanli society as she struggles to trace the actions that led Yskandr to his tragic end and to ensure Lsel’s safety during a fierce and multistranded battle for the imperial succession. Martine offers a fascinating depiction of a civilization that uses poetry and literary allusion as propaganda and whose citizens bear lovely and sometimes-humorous names like Three Seagrass, Five Portico, and Six Helicopter but that can kill with a flower and possesses the military power to impose its delicately and dangerously mannered society across the galaxy. Love and sex are an integral aspect of and a thing apart from the nuanced and dangerous politicking. This is both an epic and a human story, successful in the mode of Ann Leckie and Yoon Ha Lee.

A confident beginning with the promise of future installments that can’t come quickly enough.

Pub Date: March 26, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-18643-0

Page Count: 464

Publisher: Tor

Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019

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CRUSH THE KING

From the Crown of Shards series

A disappointing conclusion to a series that certainly wants to be epic and edgy but only manages to settle into its own ruts.

Estep concludes her Crown of Shards trilogy (Protect the Prince, 2019, etc.) with a young warrior queen's long-delayed vengeance.

When the murder of Bellona's royal family set Evie on the path to claim the throne herself, she swore to kill the man responsible: evil King Maximus, of neighboring Morta. Now, after forming some alliances, she's ready for the task, as well as ready to keep fending off yet more attempts on her life. As in the previous books, the task of fighting magical assassins is made easier by Evie's unbeatable secret power of simply being immune to magic. Evie and her friends, the members of her former gladiator troupe, travel to the Regalia, a tournament of skill, with plans to use the festivities to confront and defeat Maximus—a villain so over-the-top in his sadism and arrogance that he's hard to take seriously. It's hard to take any of the threats Evie faces seriously either: Whether it's hordes of assassins, a magical tidal wave, or the supposed unmatched arcane power of Maximus himself, Evie's trump card—her magical immunity—continues to save the day. It's sadly predictable, as is the plot itself; the finale is telegraphed early on, and a supposed twist at the end is nonsensical. The supporting cast suffers, too: Lucas Sullivan, Evie's lover who drove much of Book 2, does nothing here but gaze at Evie with alternating lust or worry; Paloma, Evie's bodyguard, gets a potentially interesting subplot...that is resolved completely off-page. The endless descriptions of parties, dresses, attractive people—and the constant narrative claims that our heroine is supposedly good at intrigue—just add to the sense that we've been here before.

A disappointing conclusion to a series that certainly wants to be epic and edgy but only manages to settle into its own ruts.

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-06-279769-8

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Harper Voyager

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020

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