An intriguing but often tough trek through another place and time.
Muslims contend with pagans in this historical novel of ancient Arabia.
In this second part of The Sword and the Well trilogy, Chamberlin (The Woman at the Well, 2011, etc.) explores the rise of the Prophet Muhammad and the conflict that arises as his brand of monotheism begins to usurp traditional Arab polytheism. Chamberlin relates this story through two main characters—the warrior general Khalid ibn al-Walid and the 12-year-old Rayah, a blue-eyed girl with supernatural powers inherited from her mother and grandmother—taking the reader across time as monotheists and pagans contend for power. For polytheists like Rayah, al-Walid and others, the desert swarms with jinn, shaytans and other gods; Muhammad and his adherents smash false idols, including a fertility god’s giant phallus, and make converts with both words and swords. Blood feuds, romantic interests and political intrigues swirl through many pages, but those expecting extended feuds and quarrels will be disappointed. Although the book can be as vivid as a desert sunset, it can also be as dry and listless as the desert at midday. The story often plods until it culminates in an epic battle, and even then, some scenes may seem overwrought, as when a woman bites the “warm, quivering liver” of a vanquished foe “while the blood coursed down her ample bosom.” Chamberlin weaves together many threads here, often skillfully, with solid research to back up her fiction, but the lyrical passages alternate with occasionally stilted dialogue (“Take that, you wretched dog’s son!”). Some readers may be derailed by the large cast of characters with difficult-to-pronounce Arabic names, the many unfamiliar, undefined Middle Eastern terms; a dearth of characterization and frequent shifts between points of view may add to the confusion. Chamberlin includes a list of prominent characters and a map, but a glossary and a more complete character list might have been useful.
An intriguing but often tough trek through another place and time.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-1936940431
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Epigraph Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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