Modern man Miles Drake transcends time and space to arrive in the medieval world of the Vikings in Horsley’s debut fantasy novel.
Horsley ventures into dangerously shopworn territory: a modern protagonist travels in time back to the era of the Vikings. But the author’s cerebral approach is neither that of a standard teen action-adventure nor a derivative paranormal romance. Multiple narrative points of view and a strong grip on alternative cultural values flavor the saga of Miles, who, until recently, has led a charmed life as a champion college athlete and successful businessman. But as he’s still reeling from the deaths of both his wife and his best friend, Miles is approached by a stranger and asked to carry out a ritual with an ancient heirloom. Abruptly he finds himself in a medieval Norse cosmos, in which he alone can approach the World Tree for healing and answers. Miles is a skeptic of the Vikings’ faith, despite the fact that his new Icelandic friends interpret him as the gods’ own instrument. He adapts with surprising ease to routine raiding and casual killing, introducing his Viking brethren to modified weapons and fighting styles. He also campaigns for chivalry toward women and the helpless, and the colonization of the great North American landmass to the west. Horsley’s storytelling frequently shifts from Miles to those around him as the timeline doubles back and flashes forward with many twists and turns. This method of narration is less burdensome to read than one might imagine, but still eccentric. The author’s most considerable achievement, besides his diverting if tangled yarn-spinning, is illuminating a much misunderstood “barbarian” mindset. Horsley depicts Viking culture with depth and nuance, adding layer to a people who pragmatically accept violence, treachery, death and the will of potentially harsh gods as a predestined way of life. A virile immersion in traditional Viking values.
Pub Date: Dec. 23, 2011
ISBN: 978-1462071654
Page Count: 396
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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