A creatively twisted adventure, though its protagonist can be unsettling.
From author Kindall (Pearl, 2015, etc.) comes a Western about one man’s mission in the 1800s.
It’s 1854, and Missourian Didier Rain makes his living by transporting various items to the West. He has delivered “stained-glass windows, a brood mare, porcelain dolls” and even “a lawyer as far as Fort Boise.” But nothing could have prepared Rain for his latest assignment. A Mormon man hires Rain to transport a young bride-to-be to a place called the City of Rocks. The catch is that the bride is not simply young, she’s a baby. The baby’s name is Virtue, and if Rain can complete his task of bringing her to the Prophet Nehi, he will be awarded $30,000. Rain is given a crash course in diaper changing, a goat to provide milk for Virtue, and an assurance that he is the “True Deliverer,” who will undoubtedly succeed. To align things with the guiding prophecy (and inherently make the journey even more difficult), Rain is not allowed to carry a weapon, not even for hunting. And he shouldn’t even think about partaking in liquor, coffee, or tobacco. It’s a strange and dangerous mission, but Rain is a strange and dangerous man. He speaks several languages, has a penchant for poetry, and has quite a troubling family history. Rain is originally from Cherbourg and to say that his past is haunted by circumstances of a Freudian nature would be an understatement. He has, in other words, not come to the American West simply for the weather. As Rain says of the event that forced him to flee France, “My life seemed over just as it was set to begin.” That anyone would send such a man (unarmed no less) with only a goat to provide milk for a baby while attempting to cross a vast stretch of wild country stretches the limits of believable fiction. It’s a quest with events that range from the silly (Rain’s horses seem to communicate with him) to the disturbing (a group of buffalo hunters force Rain to wear a dress followed by, as Rain describes it, an evening of “raucous indulgence in my orificial endowments.”) Our antihero has a peculiar, poetic way of speaking. He describes the way “water snakes fornicated in the lily pads, their golden eyes following us askance as we passed.” Rain is not entirely unlikable, but he would undoubtedly make a poor dinner guest. This novel shows an Old West that’s much weirder than standard tales of cowboys and Indians would leave one to believe. Certainly there must be room among John Wayne–style heroes for a multilingual transporter who seems fairly indifferent to his own sexual assault. Few things can be said to be standard about this tale, and the strangeness gives way to suspense in the final pages. Rain winds up on the cusp of completing his mission even if completion might not be all it is cracked up to be. Virtue’s fate becomes a nail-biter, but first the reader must endure miles and miles of seemingly endless Rain.
A creatively twisted adventure, though its protagonist can be unsettling.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9909328-9-5
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Diving Boy Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
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