Anne Rice's older sister, an energetic scene-setter, winds up her two-volume saga of tenth-century Europe begun with 1995's Devoted. A romance with elements of fantasy, Devoted told of the clash between Christianity and paganism. A raiding party of Vikings invaded the bishopric of Chantalon. Facing them were Chantalon's 23-year-old bishop, Owen, and his wife, Lady Elin of the Forest People, a pagan witch who called forth storms to drown the invaders. Borchardt wades into her sequel now with the returned Northmen trying to take charge of the river on which Chantalon lies. Owen and Elin discover this while they are out spying, looking over the Northmen's winter buildup for a spring offensive. Each page of Borchardt's relentless novel is composed of three parts gripping research and description to one part plot: A great deal of action is required to keep the narrative lively, and Borchardt supplies it. Movie stunts invade the script as well, with an unlikely swordfight between Owen and the Viking Hakon staged in the mud. Though Elin's witch-powers help rescue Owen from the Northmen, who have their own witches, she becomes pregnant after being raped by a Viking, while, throughout, she and Owen waver between ardor and recriminations. Since Chantalon hasn't enough men to defend itself for long, much less launch an attack against Hakon, Owen goes off to Britanny in search of allies, where he's offered help if he'll renounce Elin and marry a nobleman's daughter. Desperate, he agrees. Meanwhile, Hakon sends 12 berserkers to kill Owen and to steal Gynneth, Owen's bride. Although Owen (befriended by a philosopher magician, Elutides) slays the 12, Hakon nevertheless captures Elin, who's about to give birth, causing Owen to return for a final showdown with the Viking. Skulls split down to the teeth while hormonal interplay again reaches the same pulsing soft-porn hazes as in Devoted. Basically a lusty romance, with a gory overlay of duels and ambushes. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 13, 1997
ISBN: 0-525-94272-6
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1996
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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