A satisfying culmination to the adventures of a Roman warrior in the New World.
In the final volume of his alternate-history trilogy supposing that the Roman Empire never collapsed, Smale (Eagle in Exile, 2016, etc.) chronicles a 13th-century world war as Roman and Mongol empires clash in Nova Hesperia—North America.
Roma and Cahokia, "center of the mound-builder culture," maintain an uneasy alliance at the great city north of the confluence of the Mizipi and Wemissori rivers. Then word comes that Chinggis Khan and his Mongol Hordes are pillaging west of the great mountains. Disgraced Gaius Publius Marcellinus, a Crowe-in-Gladiator protagonist, had his command wiped out during Roma’s initial foray into Hesperia. Now Imperator Hadrianus gives him the unenviable task of contacting the People of the Hand far to the southwest to negotiate an alliance to resist Mongol incursions. Gaius meets tragedy, his party decimated after stumbling upon a Mongol army. Gaius survives only to wreak a near-pyrrhic victory from a Mizipi naval battle. Hadrianus decides to set out to meet the Mongols on Hesperia’s vast grasslands. Thus, Gaius is once more into the breech. The characters may be static, but they’re well-defined, whether it’s the young Cahokian chief, Tahtay, ambivalent about the alliance; Hadrianus, sly, manipulative, and audacious; or Gaius, Wanageeska to his Sintikala Cahokian wife, whom he loves passionately. There’s minimal back story; elements like the Cahokian developing hang gliders as weapons of war employing Greek fire or Khan crossing the ocean and allying with warlike Tlingits aren’t fully elucidated. The pace, however, is breathless and the action relentless, and Smale’s description of battles, tactics, and weapons—who knew a Mongol war horse was trained to bite and kick a foe?—are informed down to the construction of Mongol bows or the purposes of a centurion’s pila and gladius.
A satisfying culmination to the adventures of a Roman warrior in the New World.Pub Date: May 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8041-7726-9
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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