Her fans will enjoy this reheated fare, but it would be nice to see something fresh on offer for Bishop’s next effort.
This contemporary fantasy is the first in a series spun off from The Others, set in an alternate world where shape-shifters, vampires, and Elementals control all the natural resources and see most humans as prey.
Vicki DeVine is trying to renovate The Jumble, a rural retreat in the Finger Lakes that she received in the settlement from her divorce. After her lodger discovers a dead body, Vicki learns the deceased was hired by her slimy ex-husband and a cabal of unscrupulous businessman, who intend to force her to relinquish The Jumble so they can transform it into a ritzy resort. Regrettably for their continued survival, they don’t realize just how much the clawed and toothy locals will object to this plan. This is the latest iteration of Bishop’s favorite plot, employed liberally in far too many of her books. A sentient predator, or group of predators, provides ample evidence of their capacity for mass slaughter. A person or persons want something possessed either by the predators or by a seemingly weak woman protected by the predators. The predators wait for the enemy to do something sufficiently provocative, which they inevitably do after a series of escalating encroachments, and then the predators brutally kill the chief enemy and/or their allies, leaving the few survivors with no ability to retaliate. Bishop gets away with continually re-embroidering the same story because she's a good worldbuilder; plus, her heroes are always so likable and the villains so awful, it’s incredibly satisfying to see the latter get their righteous, messy, and, above all, predictable comeuppance. At the same time, the blindly stupid stubbornness of the enemy, persisting even as bodies pile up, gets tiresome. And the details of this novel's climactic scene are just too similar to that of Bishop's last Others novel, Etched in Bone (2017).
Her fans will enjoy this reheated fare, but it would be nice to see something fresh on offer for Bishop’s next effort.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-58724-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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