Despite its perks, immortality can, apparently, be a bore.
An ageless Egyptian pharaoh and his band of immortal friends (and enemies) descend on England on the eve of the Great War in a sequel co-authored by mother and son Rices.
In Anne Rice’s The Mummy (1989), Ramses II, known as the Great, whose long reign ended in the 13th century B.C.E., was resurrected in 1914 by English shipping magnate and archaeology dilettante Lawrence Stratford—or, more accurately, reawakened. After ingesting a special elixir, Ramses had become immortal. The earmarks of immortality include insatiable hunger (without gaining weight), capacity for alcohol (sans drunkenness, addiction, and/or liver damage), inexhaustible sexual prowess, and physical invulnerability. Not to mention that it turns your eyes blue. Occasionally, even immortals need a rest, so they secret themselves in a dark place, a pharaoh’s tomb, say, and wait for sunlight to rouse them again. Now the toast of London as Reginald Ramsey, Egyptologist, Ramses has shared the forever potion with his beloved, Julie, daughter and only heir of his now deceased discoverer. Elsewhere, assorted characters of varying longevity are slouching toward a stately home where Julie’s former fiance (no hard feelings), Alex, is hosting an engagement party for Julie and "Ramsey." Cleopatra, whose mummified remains, on display in the Cairo Museum, Ramses had revivified with a few drops of the elixir, is understandably perplexed, being the only immortal raised from actual death. Bektaten, monarch of an ancient African civilization, invented the elixir; she’s after Ramses because she suspects he stole the formula. Seeking the pure blend, not the bowdlerized version they ingested, are the fracti, hangers-on of Bektaten’s archenemy Saqnos, who live only 200 years and hope to extend their sell-by date. Complicated? Definitely, as is the plot to kidnap Julie at the party and the mind-meld that enmeshes Cleopatra and Sibyl Parker, a successful American writer of Egypt-themed pulp fiction. Once the party is in progress, the clashing immortals generate a modicum of excitement, though not enough to justify the copious expository front-loading and preachy dialogue.
Despite its perks, immortality can, apparently, be a bore.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-97032-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
Scalzi continues to be almost insufferably good at his brand of fun but think-y sci-fi adventure.
In the first of a new series, brutal politics and pitiless physics threaten an interstellar empire built on trade.
The Interdependency is a group of barren planets and space stations ruled by mercantile trading houses and linked by the Flow, an extradimensional mode of travel. Occasional shifts in the Flow have cut off the Interdependency’s connection to some planets (including Earth), but it's remained relatively stable...until now. Count Claremont, a physicist stationed on the remote planet of End, has determined that the Interdependency will soon lose access to the Flow completely. Once that happens, every member of the Interdependency will be cut off from all the others by impassible light-years of distance, and a delicate web of commerce and survival will dissolve. Claremont sends his son to the Interdependency’s ruler, the Emperox Attavio IV, to share their findings before the Flow routes disappear. But Attavio IV is dying, and his daughter, Cardenia Wu-Patrick, was never intended to assume the throne. The reluctant new emperox is immediately confronted with assassination attempts and the ruthless machinations of the ambitious House of Nohamapetan, whose members seem to have their own knowledge of the radical change in the Flow. Readers might wonder whether Scalzi can write another space opera that shares the elements that made his Old Man’s War series (The End of All Things, 2015, etc.) so popular but be sufficiently different to feel fresh. Both include political plotting, plenty of snark, puzzle-solving, and a healthy dose of action, but there’s just enough here that’s new for this to avoid becoming a retread. There’s nothing groundbreaking, but you’ll still want to find out what happens next.
Scalzi continues to be almost insufferably good at his brand of fun but think-y sci-fi adventure.Pub Date: March 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8888-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fine addition to a deservedly well-loved body of work.
All your old T-shirts and bumper stickers inscribed “Frodo Lives” may have to be replaced.
Old Hobbits do die hard—but there are none even born yet in this reconstructed tale of Middle Earth during the Elder Days (i.e., thousands of years prior to events immortalized in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy). Begun in 1918, revised several times, never published (though a capsule version of its narrative appears as a chapter in the posthumously published volume The Silmarillion), this appealing yarn is very nearly vintage Tolkien. To be sure, Middle Earth is under siege early in its history. The reigning villain is Dark Lord Morgoth (Sauron is merely one of his lieutenants), a demonic sort who rules a huge northern fortress ringed by mountains and destroys his enemies through the focused power of his malevolent will—more often than not incarnated in the figure of Glaurung, an exceedingly nasty “dragon of fire.” Their vengeful energies seek out two inordinately plucky youngsters—stalwart Túrin and his beautiful sister Nienor—who share the curse pronounced on their father Húrin, an intrepid Elfin warrior who had brazenly defied Morgoth. The episodic narrative takes off when Húrin leaves his sister and their mother Morwen (a veritable Penelope patiently awaiting her Ulysses’s return) to undertake a series of adventures that involve him with a brawling band of outlaws, the memorable Battle of Unnumbered Tears against what seem innumerable hordes of invading Orcs—remember them?), a duplicitous dwarf who offers the “shelter” of his underground stronghold and a terrific climactic encounter with the…uh, inflamed Glaurung. Strong echoes of the Finnish epic Kalevala, the tales of Robin Hood, Homeric epic and the matter of Wagnerian opera charge the text with complexity as well as vigor. And introductory and textual notes provided by the volume’s editor, Tolkien’s son Christopher, add welcome clarification.
A fine addition to a deservedly well-loved body of work.Pub Date: April 17, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-618-89464-2
Page Count: 313
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
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