An often muddled take on an intriguing era of clashing cultures.
Debut author Marshall offers a historical novel set during the time of Alfred the Great, the Anglo-Saxon king of Wessex in the late 9th century.
When a group of Vikings aims to lay siege to the village of Gains in what is now present-day Lincolnshire, England, it seems like a great pillage is about to take place. After all, the Vikings are fearless warriors of Odin, and what chance does a settlement have against such men of violence? As it turns out, the villagers manage to stage quite a routing. With the aid of a boy named Herd, who commands his dogs to harass the intruders, the townsfolk ultimately defeat the Norsemen with arrows and eggs filled with quicklime. As the Vikings fearfully flee back to their homeland, the victors back in England celebrate. A Welsh monk brings the news that King Alfred will soon be coming to the village to speak with the leader of Gains, AEthelred. Marshall goes on to weave a plot that includes King Alfred’s wedding and the rule of Viking king Harrad Bluetooth, shedding light on an oft-neglected period of European history. He frequently provides information on unfamiliar words, such as “Holliwells is Lincolnshire for a ‘holy wells,’ ” and details, such as an explanation of the process for turning goose eggs into weapons. However, the book’s bizarre penchant for question marks and awkward phrases (“Within any tribe, there’s only an infinite number of warrior class, from the group?”) makes for difficult reading. The author is clearly passionate about the period (“Historians force-feed students to believe Lincolnshire, was overrun by Vikings. Not so, both our folklore and the Viking Sagas, tell a different tale”), but that passion often translates into peculiar prose.
An often muddled take on an intriguing era of clashing cultures.Pub Date: July 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5150-1766-0
Page Count: 286
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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