A quick-paced, exhilarating story that, after only the first volume, is already epic.
In this debut novel—the start of a four-part fantasy series—a young boy and his peers endure the Tribe’s harrowing trials to decide who will become fighters.
Da-Ren is an orphan who was born in Sirol, the big camp of the Tribe. He’s one of the children gathered by the Guides, in a tradition carried out every winter for trials known as the Sieve. This determines the kids’ destinies, whether they become warriors (an Archer or Blade) or “the help” (a fisherman, blacksmith, tanner, or hunter). The weak who fall, meanwhile, will likely be put to death. Da-Ren’s already at a disadvantage: his brown hair is a stigma (for a male), indicating his mother, who died at childbirth, was a slave from the North. But Da-Ren overhears Guides saying he’s cursed as something called a ninestar, and the Ouna-Mas (the Tribe’s Witches) “will finish him” on the Sieve’s 21st day. He braves blistering cold and bouts of hunger, tolerates hostile rival Bako of the Archers, and becomes enamored with Elbia. But fearing what horrors may await him on the 21st day, Da-Ren contemplates escaping before the Sieve is completed, especially after a sickness (his curse?) befalls the group. Caskabel opens his somber tale with the older Da-Ren, the Dark Blade of the Devil, relaying his story to monk Eusebius to redeem his (unknown) wife’s and daughter’s lives. But knowing where his path leads doesn’t make Da-Ren’s experience any less torturous. He suffers physical pain and watches others die, all in a fast-moving, bracing narrative filled with grim passages: Da-Ren “boiling in a giant cauldron of agony” or peer Matsa’s “small muscles outlined as if he were a skinned rabbit.” Nevertheless, there are instances of humor, like Eusebius referring to a monk of myriad aliases by a single name due to the cost of papyrus. Book I ends with a thorough resolution, but Da-Ren clearly has much more to tell.
A quick-paced, exhilarating story that, after only the first volume, is already epic.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5334-7678-4
Page Count: 248
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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