An intriguing but uneven tale with heavy-handed references to Nazism and the Holocaust.
In this fantasy novel, Kessler (Gables Court, 2018) tells a story of an unpleasant world that’s only getting worse.
Mikkel lives a privileged life as the son of Deputy to the Secretary of the Party Otto. However, his dark complexion and aversion to killing pigs make him more like a despised group called Burners than the tall, blond members of the “master race,” led by a man called the Butcher. Mikkel has visions of creating a new civilization that doesn’t depend on pig slaughter or the subjugation of sun-worshipping Burners and other non-elites. At the same time, he also tries to fit into the existing system, rejecting lower-ranked friends and embracing, for a time, the cruelty of Ludolf, leader of the brutal Scouts. As Mikkel begins to break with the Butcher’s ways, flashback chapters reveal more of his backstory and how the persecution of the Burners began. Eventually, Otto and Mikkel decide that a plan to kill all Burners is a step too far, and Mikkel finds his place as a leader. This story can be confusing at times, and the similarity of Ludolf’s and Rudolf’s names doesn’t help matters. Familiar fantasy tropes abound, from an overabundance of capitalized nouns to Mikkel’s role as a chosen one. The Butcher is also given to highly dramatic pronouncements: “Burner death through Party innovation gives the faithful a glimpse of the purged world to come.” However, Kessler’s prose is generally strong, with occasional moments of dry humor amid the bleakness of the narrative. The heavy violence will not appeal to all readers, but some will find this book as a whole to be an enjoyable, multilayered fantasy. Its allusions are rarely subtle, though; Burners are trapped in a stockade and have numbers written on their arms, the Butcher calls them “diseased creatures more animal than human,” and the Secretary of the Party suggests disposing of them in “a large oven.”
An intriguing but uneven tale with heavy-handed references to Nazism and the Holocaust.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68433-220-5
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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