From the author of Icefalcon’s Quest (1998), among others, a sequel to Dragonsbane. These are the further adventures of bespectacled, bookish dragon-slayer John Aversin, Thane of the Winterlands, and his wizardly wife, Jenny Waynest. When a dragon attacks the Winterlands, John must go alone to kill the creature, Jenny being preoccupied with subduing a powerful but untrained bandit wizard. But Ian, John’s 12-year-old mage-born son, follows his father, ready with his healing skills. Though John wounds the dragon, he is badly injured himself, but as Ian steps forward, a mysterious mage intervenes, enslaving the dragon by saving its life, and abducting Ian as John watches helplessly. Soon this mage, Caradoc, enslaves more dragons and wizards. After Jenny helps John recover, he floats off in a hot-air balloon to consult Morkeleb the Black, oldest and greatest of dragons. But Morkeleb, who loves Jenny and once transformed her into a dragon, isn’t interested—until the enslaved dragons and wizards, orchestrated by Caradoc, attack him. John, meanwhile, delving into ancient texts, learns that Caradoc has sold his soul to a demon; crucially, the souls of those Caradoc has enslaved are trapped within gemstones, not lost forever. Even with Morkeleb’s help, though, John and Jenny are no match for Caradoc’s demon-powered wizardry. Worse, when Jenny attempts to use her dragon-powers against demon-Caradoc, he drinks her magic and enslaves her too, forcing her to perform unspeakable acts while relishing her agony and revulsion. John, risking eternal torment, must get help from demons even more powerful than Caradoc’s masters, but he finds that his wizardly allies, the gnomes, refuse to help him fulfill his part of the bargain. Beautifully concise, adroitly plotted, inventive, and insightful: a wrenching affair that works its barbed pleasures ever deeper into the enthralled, horrified reader.
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-345-42187-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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