Carter’s debut novel blends epic fantasy tropes, Zen-like magical abilities, unique mythological creatures and humorous character development into a frothy adventure.
The twin suns Solar and Solis burn in the skies above the Minar plains, reflecting off the spires of the Crystal Trine. It’s the home of the last Cynosure Masters, who have the power to turn thought into reality. Tegain Hostler, an innkeeper who became an adventurer after the death of his beloved wife and daughter, seeks the Masters in an effort to find answers (“[A]lmost nothing remains of what used to be. I want to know what or who took it from me”). Strange beasts that were long thought to be myth, such as the black-taloned Grimble, roam the land, leaving destruction in their wake. Tegain has a mysterious, sentient sword that calls itself Lyn; his other companions include an old soldier named Karl and a beautiful, if not fully trustworthy, rogue named Vyckie. Together and separately, the three must face dangers of all sorts as they attempt to free the land from the plague of unnatural beings laying siege to it. The story’s greatest flaw is its occasional predictability; for example, readers will find it unsurprising when Tegain’s wife and daughter die, due to the way the story portrays them beforehand as his entire world. However, the strange beasts are the most creative aspect of this tale. Carter even includes atmospheric, creepy nursery rhymes that list the characteristics of some of these terrible creatures (“Click, Click, Click / Go Grimble claws / Click, Click, Click / Go Grimble maws”). Lyn is almost as compelling, as a human mind confined within a sword for uncounted years. Some fantasy novels struggle with characterizations of sentient objects, but here, Lyn is a well-fleshed-out character—particularly for one made of metal. The other players are less interesting, but some, particularly Karl, are still entertaining.
A solid adventure story with unique monsters and challenges, despite occasional lapses into predictability.
Pub Date: July 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1941469002
Page Count: 238
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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