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
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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