Satisfying, almost.
Apocalypse, rebellion, betrayal, and blood-soaked quests for personal redemption drive the plot of the final volume of the grimdark Crimson Empire trilogy (A Blade of Black Steel, 2016, etc.).
The island of Jex Toth has risen from the First Dark, and its devil-possessed council of undead sorcerers plans to purge the continent of the Star and restore the Fallen Mother, who, although worshiped by the Church of the Burnished Chain, is less a goddess and more an extremely powerful devil. Meanwhile, deposed Queen Indsorith of the Crimson Empire and her predecessor and unlikely ally, Cold Zosia, face an army of revolutionaries in the ruined city of Diadem, Gen. Ji-hyeon of the Cobalt Company is lost in the hellish landscapes of the First Dark with a newly mutated eye, and a motley group heads toward Jex Toth in search of the mercenary Maroto, who, for his part, makes some incredibly dubious and self-serving choices at first to save his life and then to salve his conscience. Will our widely scattered heroes manage to join together and stave off an apocalypse teeming with slimy monsters and floods of crawling sentient bugs? Alex Marshall is the pen name of Jesse Bullington (The Folly of the World, 2012); the relationship should’ve been obvious from the first, given both personas’ penchant for lovingly described grotesquerie and the lavish spurting of a variety of bodily fluids. There are also thrilling action set pieces, the tying off of most (but not all) loose ends, and multistage battle sequences, all building up to, well, somewhat of a fizzle. The author may intend the climax as a cynical metacommentary on how such epics usually end; or perhaps to explain how it isn’t the end that’s important, just the messy, limb-destroying journey to get there.
Satisfying, almost.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-34072-4
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
If you accept the notion that the laws of gravity are just suggestions, this makes for a grand entertainment.
Bennett (City of Miracles, 2017, etc.) inaugurates another series of imaginative, thoroughly idiosyncratic fantasy novels.
Mona Lisa meets The Matrix in Bennett’s introduction to the carefully constructed world of Tevanne, a city-state dominated by four merchant houses—literally. The four big boys (think Amazon, Google, Facebook, and…well, Penguin Random House, maybe) occupy fortresses that, though stoutly built and heavily patrolled, are no match for Sancia Grado, a gamin version of the Tom Cruise of Mission Impossible, if not Spiderman. Sancia scales walls and penetrates castle keeps with ease, and she’s not above dispatching a guard or two in the pursuit of her work: “She did have her stiletto, and she was an able sneak, and though she was small, she was strong for her size.” Bless her heart, Sancia shows mercy, pulls off the heist she was hired for, then retreats into the teeming, seething world between the walls of those great houses, whose masters have made a killing with a thing called “scriving”—“instructions written upon mindless objects that convinced them to disobey reality in select ways.” Thus a carriage on a horizontal plane might be commanded to roll as if on a steep slope, removing the need for horses to pull it. But what if some corporate villain were to scrive a person in such a way that he or she might become a soldier impervious to pain or discomfort, an arrow that might travel with the wall-breaking force of a cannonball? That’s the scenario Sancia tumbles into when she discovers that she’s stolen—wait for it—a talking key named, naturally, Clef. The baddies want Clef to complete their job of world domination, Clef wants to find the lock of his dreams, and Sancia—well, Sancia has many a fish to fry, alternately helped along and hindered by fellow criminal masterminds, proletarians, a well-connected cop worthy of Umberto Eco, executives of ill intent, and a few other talking inanimate objects.
If you accept the notion that the laws of gravity are just suggestions, this makes for a grand entertainment.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6036-6
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
Miaowara Tomokato, the feline whose tongue is sharper than his sword, returns for a fifth engagement in this series by Rogers (The Sword of Samurai Cat, 1991, etc.). This time, Tomokato and his nephew, Shiro, take on the heroes of the silver screen in a sequence of parodies of American film favorites. Pursued throughout by the Terminator, Shiro races through the land of Oz, to Zirconsville, where he encounters the wizard, who wears a KKK hood (``Nobody told me he was a Grand Wizard''), and is told that in order to return home, he must steal a tanker of topsoil from the Wicked Witch of the Southeast. Rescued from the mess by Tomokato, Shiro moves on to a parody of the Seven Samurai, then finds himself on board the Starship Eisenhower, with its crew, Captain Paunch, First Officer Spocky, and Chief Cleavage Officer Lt. O'Hara. Tomokato and Shiro's adventures end with an encounter with their guardian angel, Henry, who tries to protect them from the likes of cannibal Hasdrubal Lectern and Ubersaurus Rex, and, of course, the Terminator, who pursues them still. Rogers fans will find this wacky, zany, hilarious. Others may well find it mind-numbingly silly and occasionally offensive.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-85744-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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