With a riveting villain, diverse cast, and mesmerizing violence, this epic offers plenty of meat on the bone for sword and...
An immortal tyrant and his soul-collecting lieutenant bid to enslave the Western world in Harwood’s debut novel, the first volume in a sword and sorcery saga.
Pieter Thomas, a fisherman in the raw Caribbean dotted with European plantations and slave labor, hurries to his island for the birth of his son. The newborn soon shows miraculous gifts. A valiant but unassuming Dutchman, Pieter doubts the lurid tales surrounding Jeringas Mortifer, evil ruler of much of nearby Venezuela. Mortifer is said to be 2,500 years old, bending thousands to his will by touch and sight alone. But all indeed grows dark as readers meet Mortifer’s chief lieutenant, the Soul Collector. Bringing dread and death, he serves both Mortifer and their higher authority, the dark powers of the supernatural “continuum.” The Collector kills quickly but imprisons the souls of esteemed opponents. Mortifer and the Collector seek two prophetic stone tablets, which tell of a Child of Prophecy who will free the Caribbean of evil. As the plot unfolds, a seer—the Mother of the Third Eye—guides the Dutch fisherman. In a vision, she shows him his newborn son’s stupendous but fraught future. Later, as readers learn the appalling key to Mortifer’s immortality, he orders the Collector to explore an alliance with an island of vampires. In the final pages, the heavens confirm the approach of a cataclysmic conflict. Here and elsewhere, readers will see the influence of other epics—The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, the New Testament, and tales of King Herod. But the novel stands well on its own. Impressively, a wide range of characters and settings lives vividly on the page: African slaves, British officers, and Spanish sailors, vulnerable clairvoyants and Romanian bloodsuckers all play their parts. But the Collector of Souls unquestionably leads the pack. Harwood has wisely endowed him with a sense of honor, which, even while he serves a sordid master, humanizes and redeems him.
With a riveting villain, diverse cast, and mesmerizing violence, this epic offers plenty of meat on the bone for sword and sorcery fans.Pub Date: May 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0989375009
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Herschel-Floyd Publications
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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