A sharply intelligent and energetic historical fantasy.
In this historical fantasy debut, an insurance salesman travels to the ninth century to save a lady love he hasn’t met yet.
Wade Linwood, a 23-year-old auto insurance salesman from Long Island, New York, has synesthesia. This disorder of cross-wired senses might cause, for example, the sight of African violets to conjure the taste of buttered toast. To ease these symptoms (and his carpal tunnel syndrome), Wade visits acupuncturist Dr. Gennadi “Nate” Nesky. In the waiting room, he’s pretty sure that a quadriplegic girl named Kreindel Richter suddenly gains muscle control and acknowledges him. The claim enrages the girl’s father, who insists, “Her face never changes. It can’t.” The day grows weirder during Wade’s appointment. The acupuncture is so effective it temporarily propels his mind into the deep past and onto the property of a leatherworker. Later, at Wheelwright Insurance, an incident with a co-worker results in Wade catching his hand in a slammed glass door. To relieve the agony, he uses a piece of broken glass to prick a sensitive spot above his heel. This flings his mind and body back onto the leatherworker’s land. The man, Wade learns, is Olich the Dyer. The place is Swabia in the Frankish Kingdom of 813 C.E. In this series opener, author Parris (Today You Write the Book, 2015, etc.) shapes his vast historical knowledge into an odd, exhilarating adventure. The year 813—as Wade eventually learns from another time-lost character—is a flashpoint between the crumbling of the Byzantine Empire and the descent into the Middle Ages. While fumbling through a realm of rampant kidnapping, theft, and murder, our hero meets the lovely Kreindia the Strange. She’s also a synesthete but uses the ability/affliction for an oracular power that most take for witchcraft. But soon after Wade and Kreindia meet at the abbey of Sintlas Ow, they are separated by Kreindia’s mission to heal an ill Emperor Charlemagne. Many would be lucky to write a whole series marked by the wit and gift for swashbuckling action and romance that Parris builds into his debut. A joyous—and deviously strange—finale should drive readers to the sequel.
A sharply intelligent and energetic historical fantasy.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-942183-04-4
Page Count: 394
Publisher: Blueberry Lane Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
