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Mystic Claw

Name: Mystic Claw
Author: Alvin Luther
ISBN: 978-0-692-27531-3

BOOK 1

by Alvin Luther ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 10, 2015

A noble effort that strains for effortless poetry.

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In Luther’s debut mystical fantasy, a godlike wizard returns to the world he created and abandoned to impart wisdom on the misbehaving creatures he brought to life.

When Aldwyn returns to his world of Shiniva billions of years after he left, he discovers that, in his absence, the animals he brought to life have gone to war numerous times, tearing apart what was once a peaceful paradise. Rather than seeking a harsh punishment, however, he reaches into his magic bag full of countless stories he’s collected on his travels, and he decrees that, for education, the animals will have to listen to every one of them. The first story he pulls out is the tale of a strange traveling loner named Zaven, who arrives at the small town of Cedar Willow, where he’s met by suspicion. Soon afterward, an older man, Jeb, who owns an antique shop, offers Zaven shelter if he’ll take Jeb’s nephew Ivan on a short journey to retrieve a mysterious chest. After Zaven and Ivan locate and dig it up, an errant family of raccoons opens the chest while the two sleep. Out of the box comes an enchanted claw, which has the power to grant wishes, and the dark fairy collection proceeds from there. Luther crafts an evocative first novel with a tantalizing air of ancient mystery. To the story’s credit, it often reads as if it could have been passed down via the oral tradition from a long-distant society. Unfortunately, this also creates a distancing effect between the reader and the characters, who feel more like archetypal ciphers than flesh-and-blood people. Further, while Luther’s prose sometimes successfully conjures his intended atmosphere, it often lapses into overly forced metaphor and faux-poetic syntax: “Lew released the helmet and the helmet rolled. Neck, broken. Face, dead”; “The elderly husband fell like the eye of a flayed fish.”

A noble effort that strains for effortless poetry.

Pub Date: April 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-692-27531-3

Page Count: 162

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Sept. 11, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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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.