A thoroughly satisfying yarn that should keep readers waiting impatiently for further installments.
First of a fantasy trilogy, sort of a French Revolution with wizards; McClelland’s debut packs some serious heat.
“The Age of Kings is dead...and I have killed it” declares Field Marshal Tamas, having overthrown the self-indulgent and utterly uncaring monarch who not only bankrupted the state of Adro and left his people starving, but intended to sell what was left to powerful, warlike and covetous neighbor Kez. Tamas, a powder mage, one who eats or snorts gunpowder in order to gain magic powers, slaughtered the monarch’s royal cabal of Privileged mages and now proceeds to guillotine the remaining aristocracy, feed the people and set up a ruling council. He asks Adamat, a retired police inspector with a perfect memory, to discover what the mysterious Kresimir’s Promise might mean. Tamas must still deal with assaults by royalist fanatics, power struggles among his supposed allies (the church, workers unions and mercenary forces), and his own disaffected son Taniel, a powder mage and master marksman. Taniel’s companion is Ka-poel, a young, mute barbarian female whose powerful magics are unlike those of other mages. Julene, posing as a hunter of Privileged, turns out to be something else altogether. Mihali, possibly quite mad in claiming to be the son of a god, indeed proves to be a master chef, evidently with the ability to conjure food out of thin air. If that’s not enough, Adamat discovers there’s a traitor among the ruling council. And then the Kez attack. This is a stew of splendidly diverse and flavorsome ingredients, outstanding action sequences and well-handled, relentless if sometimes overelaborate plotting, despite some worrisome indications than McClellan hasn’t fully thought all the concepts through.
A thoroughly satisfying yarn that should keep readers waiting impatiently for further installments.Pub Date: April 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-21903-7
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
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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