Having perhaps bled all the possibilities out of earthly children of the night, Rice (Prince Lestat, 2014, etc.) takes a bite out of two big bodies of myth.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Pity poor Prince Lestat; he was once able to roam the world without a care, nipping and frolicking, but now he has administrative duties and, with them, fresh enemies seeking a shot at power. One constant source of irritation is the stately Rhoshamandes who has suddenly come into an all-day sucker of a captive whose ever flowing juice has “nutrients that human blood does not have.” A fine thing for a vampire’s inventory, to be sure, but a portal as well into a world whose technology, as so often happens, has outpaced its morals. Down in that watery realm, the denizens scorn the place where “a dreadful thing had happened in that mammals had gained self-awareness and intelligence and now ruled the planet.” The better to provide vampire chow, one might say. But the Atalantayans have their hungers, too, and the hungriest of them seems to have latched on to poor Lestat. Inner voice, nothing: Amel is much more than a haunting spirit, “as different from ghosts,” another superevolved being tells us, “as angels are from humans.” Who will prevail? Well, if Amel sometimes conjures Charlie Manson, Lestat sounds like Twiggy once the fussing and feuding between immortal domains is settled: “This is our universe,” he says, “We too are made of stardust as are all things on this planet; we too belong.” Yeah, well. Fans of Rice’s vampire fiction will feast on whatever they can of hers, but Ignatius Donnelly/Edgar Cayce aficionados may twitch at all the “kindred in the Blood” stuff uneasily mixed in with the old lost continent mythos.
Rice’s latest excursion into otherly realms may leave some readers feeling overstuffed—but others, to be sure, will be hungry for more.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-385-35379-3
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
Categories: FANTASY | PARANORMAL FICTION | PARANORMAL FANTASY | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE
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A celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.
48
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After 1,000 years of peace, whispers that “the Nameless One will return” ignite the spark that sets the world order aflame.
No, the Nameless One is not a new nickname for Voldemort. Here, evil takes the shape of fire-breathing dragons—beasts that feed off chaos and imbalance—set on destroying humankind. The leader of these creatures, the Nameless One, has been trapped in the Abyss for ages after having been severely wounded by the sword Ascalon wielded by Galian Berethnet. These events brought about the current order: Virtudom, the kingdom set up by Berethnet, is a pious society that considers all dragons evil. In the East, dragons are worshiped as gods—but not the fire-breathing type. These dragons channel the power of water and are said to be born of stars. They forge a connection with humans by taking riders. In the South, an entirely different way of thinking exists. There, a society of female mages called the Priory worships the Mother. They don’t believe that the Berethnet line, continued by generations of queens, is the sacred key to keeping the Nameless One at bay. This means he could return—and soon. “Do you not see? It is a cycle.” The one thing uniting all corners of the world is fear. Representatives of each belief system—Queen Sabran the Ninth of Virtudom, hopeful dragon rider Tané of the East, and Ead Duryan, mage of the Priory from the South—are linked by the common goal of keeping the Nameless One trapped at any cost. This world of female warriors and leaders feels natural, and while there is a “chosen one” aspect to the tale, it’s far from the main point. Shannon’s depth of imagination and worldbuilding are impressive, as this 800-pager is filled not only with legend, but also with satisfying twists that turn legend on its head. Shannon isn’t new to this game of complex storytelling. Her Bone Season novels (The Song Rising, 2017, etc.) navigate a multilayered society of clairvoyants. Here, Shannon chooses a more traditional view of magic, where light fights against dark, earth against sky, and fire against water. Through these classic pairings, an entirely fresh and addicting tale is born. Shannon may favor detailed explication over keeping a steady pace, but the epic converging of plotlines at the end is enough to forgive.
A celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63557-029-8
Page Count: 848
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | FANTASY | EPIC FANTASY
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King fans won’t be disappointed, though most will likely prefer the scarier likes of The Shining and It.
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The master of modern horror returns with a loose-knit parapsychological thriller that touches on territory previously explored in Firestarter and Carrie.
Tim Jamieson is a man emphatically not in a hurry. As King’s (The Outsider, 2018, etc.) latest opens, he’s bargaining with a flight attendant to sell his seat on an overbooked run from Tampa to New York. His pockets full, he sticks out his thumb and winds up in the backwater South Carolina town of DuPray (should we hear echoes of “pray”? Or “depraved”?). Turns out he’s a decorated cop, good at his job and at reading others (“You ought to go see Doc Roper,” he tells a local. “There are pills that will brighten your attitude”). Shift the scene to Minneapolis, where young Luke Ellis, precociously brilliant, has been kidnapped by a crack extraction team, his parents brutally murdered so that it looks as if he did it. Luke is spirited off to Maine—this is King, so it’s got to be Maine—and a secret shadow-government lab where similarly conscripted paranormally blessed kids, psychokinetic and telepathic, are made to endure the Skinnerian pain-and-reward methods of the evil Mrs. Sigsby. How to bring the stories of Tim and Luke together? King has never minded detours into the unlikely, but for this one, disbelief must be extra-willingly suspended. In the end, their forces joined, the two and their redneck allies battle the sophisticated secret agents of The Institute in a bloodbath of flying bullets and beams of mental energy (“You’re in the south now, Annie had told these gunned-up interlopers. She had an idea they were about to find out just how true that was"). It’s not King at his best, but he plays on current themes of conspiracy theory, child abuse, the occult, and Deep State malevolence while getting in digs at the current occupant of the White House, to say nothing of shadowy evil masterminds with lisps.
King fans won’t be disappointed, though most will likely prefer the scarier likes of The Shining and It.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9821-1056-7
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | PARANORMAL FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUPERNATURAL THRILLER
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