This absorbing tale deftly brings to life momentous military events of the 13th century.
This third installment of a historical fiction series focuses on Mamluk warriors.
Graft follows up his previous book, A Lion's Share(2019), with another narrative based on highly trained, enslaved soldiers known as Mamluks. It is the year 1257 when the Sultan of Egypt is murdered in his bath. It does not take long for Cenk, a Mamluk from the preceding two installments with a penchant for koumis (fermented mare’s milk), to dispense with the culprits. But what does the future hold for Egypt? Things are tense throughout the region. This is especially true thanks to a threat from the East. Mongol forces are on the warpath; their destruction of Baghdad is ruthless and quick. Those who hope to withstand one of their invasions will need more than luck on their side. It’s a good thing Egypt has men like Leander. Leander, a Mamluk who defected from the French years ago, is on a scouting mission. What he sees is not encouraging: The Mongols’ weaponry is advanced and their numbers are immense. To further complicate matters for Leander, a spy is looking for him. Meanwhile, an accomplished Kipchak craftswoman named Esel embarks on her own path of survival. Esel seeks to escape the life of an enslaved person to help a nephew she has not seen in years. Early portions of the narrative that focus on Esel can move slowly. Readers come to understand all about how (and why) Esel is so good at making bows. They also learn how important bows are when one lives in a harsh steppe environment. Wolves eating your livestock? Better have some well-made weapons at your disposal. Nevertheless, the story kicks into a higher gear when attention turns to the Mongols. Even if some of the political maneuvering and alliances can be complicated, readers learn a lot about the opponents approaching the Mamluks. From wielding mangonels and 12-foot lances fitted with hooks to displaying a fondness for systematically destroying local structures (and subsequently catapulting the debris), a fierce group that is too often generalized as a faceless horde is skillfully illuminated. When a battle approaches, even the horses “snort their realization of what soon comes.”
This absorbing tale deftly brings to life momentous military events of the 13th century.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-950154-71-5
Page Count: 552
Publisher: The Sager Group LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.
A chance meeting in a museum unlocks a long-closed door in a family’s past.
Of a piece with her last three novels—Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023)—Patchett’s latest explores the evolution of families over time, romantic secrets, and step-relationships, again giving these topics the wry and tender treatment that is distinctively hers. As it begins, Daphne Fuller’s attentive husband, Jonathan, notices that a man has been following them through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At first they chalk it up to the fact that “old guys love [Daphne],” as she told Jonathan decades ago, a notion he has held onto "like a souvenir postcard from another era." But it turns out that, though Daphne doesn’t recognize him, Eddie Triplett is her former stepfather. Like the author herself, as recalled in her 2020 essay “Three Fathers,” Daphne has had three dads. Her biological father, a deep-sea fisherman named Buddy Zabriskie, left the family early; her current stepfather, Lucas Ekker, lives with her mother in retirement in Massachusetts. Ekker is an unprepossessing sort Abby met working as the publicist for his self-help books, Positivity!, Positively Positive!, The Positivity Workbook!, Positive Every Day!, ad infinitum. The man in the museum, Eddie Triplett, was also someone her mother met through her job in publishing, and once Daphne realizes who he is, she remembers that “[their] hearts were forever stitched together.” This is because Daphne and Eddie were in a serious car accident when she was 9 years old, after which her mother immediately divorced him and evicted him from their lives. The details of that accident—among them lies the reason the novel is named after a horse called Whistler—are gradually wheedled out of Daphne by her younger sister, Leda, a clinical psychologist in New York and a reliable source of insight on the narrative’s key issues. “‘You make it sound like I’ve been keeping all this from you, but I’m not,’ [Daphne] said. ‘Who goes through life thinking about what happened when they were nine?’ ‘It’s all people think about,’ Leda said.”
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9780063511637
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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