Should appeal to grimdark fans looking for the extreme edge; others may well find it nasty, brutish, and not short enough.
Fantasy debut and first of a series from an author whose Twitter handle is @queenofgrimdark; it first appeared earlier this year in the U.K.
For those unacquainted, “grimdark” is a subgenre sometimes characterized as anti-Tolkien or nihilistic, though more generally referring to grunge fantasy featuring unremitting gory violence, characters with few or no redeeming virtues, and an atmosphere of gloom and doom. As the once-mighty Sekemleth Empire crumbles, Lord Orhan Emmereth decides a change of governance is necessary and organizes a conspiracy to murder the emperor and all his chief advisers. He hires a company of mercenaries—who more resemble Shakespearean rude mechanicals than professional killers—to infiltrate the impregnable city of Sorlost and do the deed. Led by the thoughtful Tobias and featuring a mysteriously well-educated, nervous young drug addict named Marith—who manages to kill a dragon along the way—the company reaches the city. Expect betrayal inside deception wrapped in double-dealing, a gory slaughterfest, and the revelation of Marith’s true identity. Taking advantage of the ensuing chaos, Thalia, the powerful high priestess of the official religion, which features child sacrifice, whose fate is to be killed by her successor, escapes the temple only to fall in with Tobias, Marith, and company, where she becomes utterly entranced by Marith’s physical beauty. Those impressed by frequent, graphic, almost Monty Python–ish bloody violence and characters with no claim to righteousness will find much to admire here. Others will marvel at a yarn of 450-plus pages whose plot contains so little of real substance and whose main character is a homicidal psychopath with no intriguing or sympathetic qualities whatsoever.
Should appeal to grimdark fans looking for the extreme edge; others may well find it nasty, brutish, and not short enough.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-51142-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A somewhat fragmentary nocturnal shadows Jim Nightshade and his friend Will Halloway, born just before and just after midnight on the 31st of October, as they walk the thin line between real and imaginary worlds. A carnival (evil) comes to town with its calliope, merry-go-round and mirror maze, and in its distortion, the funeral march is played backwards, their teacher's nephew seems to assume the identity of the carnival's Mr. Cooger. The Illustrated Man (an earlier Bradbury title) doubles as Mr. Dark. comes for the boys and Jim almost does; and there are other spectres in this freakshow of the mind, The Witch, The Dwarf, etc., before faith casts out all these fears which the carnival has exploited... The allusions (the October country, the autumn people, etc.) as well as the concerns of previous books will be familiar to Bradbury's readers as once again this conjurer limns a haunted landscape in an allegory of good and evil. Definitely for all admirers.
Pub Date: June 15, 1962
ISBN: 0380977273
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962
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