Cornwell's latest is often bloody, sometimes ribald, but always smartly done. Fans might be disappointed with this effort’s...
"Englaland" [sic], King Alfred once said, "will be God’s land," but first the Norse and the Danes, worshippers of the old gods, must be banished, a bloody struggle Cornwell (The Empty Throne, 2015, etc.) chronicles in the ninth of his Saxon series.
This tale’s a continuous barrage of battles, interspersed with political, social, and religious intrigue. In the 10th century, Saxon King Edward (Alfred's son) rules Wessex and East Anglia. Mercia is ruled by Edward’s sister, Lady Æthelflaed. Between those three regions and wild Scotland is Northumbria, controlled by Norsemen and Danes. Edward is cautious, unwilling yet to move north. The more adventurous Lady Æthelflaed’s being prodded by her ally Uhtred, Lord of Bebbanburg, whose northern lands are held by the invaders. Wielding his sword, Serpent-Breath, Uhtred speeds to battle when Ragnall the Cruel, leading Norsemen, Danes, and Irish, sails up the River Mærse. Ragnall intends to conquer and unite the four kingdoms. Thus begin battles large and small, culminating at Hrothwulf’s Farm. (Cornwell includes a map and place name index.) Uhtred, always attacking at "wolf-light," the mist-riven pre-dawn hours, has grown into a multidimensional character, and Cornwell’s vivid descriptions do justice to the sceptered isle. Beyond the sword and shield are interesting themes about political expediency, personal loyalty, and the complicated confrontations between early Christians and worshippers of pagan gods. Cornwell’s archaic curses are fun—"a useless lump of self-important gristle"—and there’s more than one colorful factoid—bleached skulls on ramparts become a fear-inspiring "ghost fence." As usual, Cornwell’s research gives the book veracity, and his rendering of the tale from Uthred’s point of view allows immersion into the complex story of how disparate kingdoms became England.
Cornwell's latest is often bloody, sometimes ribald, but always smartly done. Fans might be disappointed with this effort’s brevity, though, and new readers will be better served by beginning at the start of the series (The Last Kingdom, 2005).Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-225094-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
PROFILES
© Copyright 2025 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.
