While it needs more depth, the world laid out in this book promises an entertaining series to come.
White Witch Kana brings himself to earth to teach a group of young men and women to fight back against the devil.
Olheiser’s debut fantasy novel opens with a quote from ancient text the Tablets of Time: “There will come a young White Witch, Kana by name, who shall be more powerful than any White Witch before him. With the weapons of God and an army of Youth recruited from the earth, he will drive Satan from that world forever!” [pg. ix] The prophecy begins to come through after a party, where best friends Ryon and Mádeohn display supernatural ability when they attempt to fight off a tidal wave that suddenly crashes on the beach near them. Soon after this incident, the boys’ community college Mystic Arts class is crashed by Kana, a leading White Witch who also happens to be Ryon’s guardian angel. The time has come, he explains, to make sure Ryon and his friends are ready for the role they will play in saving the world from the Devil and his armies. After a lengthy explanation of the events leading up to Satan’s expulsion from heaven, and events thereafter, Kana effectively takes over the Mystic Arts class to teach the students how to fight and defend themselves, all with the power of their minds. They’ll need it, too - while most of the book deals with these lessons, and with the things that happen as certain students get closer to each other and closer to their supernatural benefactors, Satan is hatching plans, and they’ll need to use everything they’ve learned to make sure he doesn’t win. While the book introduces an interesting mythology and a few interesting characters, it suffers from a lack of insight into why these events are happening. What makes this the right time for Kana to teach Ryon what he knows? Why are these students enrolled in a Mystic Arts class? What makes Kana the most powerful White Witch? Why are witches synonymous with angels in this world? A deeper look into these ideas as the story unfolds would have made it a more powerful and compelling read. As it stands, it is entertaining and interesting, and makes additional stories in the upcoming series promising.
While it needs more depth, the world laid out in this book promises an entertaining series to come.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-0615886237
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Anthony Ray Olheiser
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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