An inventive romp through a variety of intriguing worlds with captivating characters.
This third installment of a YA fantasy series stars an intrepid hero.
Anonymous’ tale follows The Legends of Eve: Book of Fire (2020) and focuses on “Fujita, the School of Wind and Wisdom.” Fujak is a young man of the Fuj family. It has been some two years since he was at Fujita, and he returns with friends. But Fujak is nervous. He brings along a romantic interest named Tayna, who is greeted by Fujak’s father with a dagger pointed at her throat and some tough questions. Quite the welcome indeed; still, Tayna passes the initial inspection. Meanwhile, the people at Fujita are in a festive mood. But things take a turn when a prophet informs Fujak that trouble is just around the corner. According to the seer’s prediction, “This parade, this festival, this happiness and dancing is only the precursor before the death that sweeps through this Kingdom…this year.” Fujak is just one of several characters who will be tested. As the prophet tells others, “The world as you know it will burn, but from its ashes may come hope.” And so begins an imaginative adventure with an extensive cast that incorporates the elite Crystal Soldiers, creatures called Archons, and even a sexual experience for Fujak. Although there is a lot to keep track of, the narrative rewards patience with unexpected developments. At several points, Fujak even addresses readers directly. Then there are numerous changes of scenery that include an icy tundra and a lush rainforest. But chapters tend to be heavy with conversations, and the dialogue is often unproductive and marked by ellipses, as when one character says: “Please tell me…you aren’t thinking about going in there.” Such assertions are not particularly creative in a work that so often bursts with surprises. Still, other portions of dialogue put a twist on the genre. For instance, talk of understanding the nature of Archons (“Do we consider them monsters…for merely wanting to survive?”) helps make this engaging story something more than just a tale of good versus evil.
An inventive romp through a variety of intriguing worlds with captivating characters.Pub Date: July 15, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 688
Publisher: DreamWords Publishing, LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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