An intriguing but uneven fantasy aimed at Christians who find strength in their faith.
This debut middle-grade fantasy uses the well-known Christian song “This Little Light of Mine” to spin a tale about three children fighting against an impending Darkness.
Lauren, Aiden, and Ethan have a happy life with their parents despite the fact that the Heathlands is being overrun by a mysterious force known as the Darkness. Their father, a Master Artificer with the Mighty Mercenaries, must leave home to fight against this evil invader. But before he does, he builds a Tower of Light, akin to a lighthouse, in their backyard. The parson from their church brings a lantern to place in the Tower. The family sets the lamp ablaze by singing “This Little Light of Mine” and keeps it going by remaining faithful to God through prayer and worship. Not long after the siblings’ father leaves, he is reported missing. Their mother must go after him, leaving Lauren in charge of her two younger brothers and tasking the siblings with maintaining the farm and keeping the light in the Tower burning brightly through their faithfulness. In the wake of their mother’s absence, the children discover that things in their town seem to be getting worse, as a mysterious bishop ousts the parson from their church and a vagabond in the trappings of a Mighty Mercenary begins to stir up trouble. What’s more, the kids have discovered weapons seemingly made for them to use in the fight against the Darkness. The Heathlands is a vivid, American frontierlike setting, marking it as unusual in the fantasy genre, which usually takes its cues from medieval Europe. Though Brokken’s series opener effectively focuses on each of the three children in turn, offering rich details, they lack complex characterization. The story portrays the kids as overly credulous and obedient. This is perhaps intended to distinguish them as good Christian role models, and the earnest tale is very much written for devout Christians. While the novel should appeal to that target audience, this strategy prevents the children from feeling like fully realized characters.
An intriguing but uneven fantasy aimed at Christians who find strength in their faith.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-69722-402-3
Page Count: 213
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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