An enthralling coming-of-age story that unfolds in a land both strange and recognizable.
In this epic fantasy by the author of The Sword of God (2009), a boy ascends into adulthood in a world tarnished by others’ bigotry and thirst for political power.
The 12-year-old Olei (who eventually uses his full name, Ologrin, instead of that nickname) lives in Halrin’s Spur, a herding village in the land of Lhosa. When hideous creatures with “twisting masses of horn growing from their disfigured heads” suddenly raid the village, the boy survives, but many, including his mother, do not. Under the tutelage of Tobin, a man who makes cheese for trading, Ologrin is shocked by a bladed attack by a woman he later learns is named Thania. “I know what you are,” she cryptically tells him. Years later, as an apprentice priest in the city of Antola, he nearly succumbs to another assault with lethal intent. Ologrin encounters a friendly soul in Vireo, a woman who’s a Polfre, one of the humans who, according to legend, had lived on Lhosa first and wielded magic. Based on Ologrin’s tanj (a knifelike object from his long-ago vanished father) and subtle physical traits, Vireo determines he’s half Polfre and, as an outsider, is a probable threat. This makes it especially challenging when Ologrin is unavoidably embroiled in politics: Can he change Lhosa for the better when powerful men want to kill him? Krause packs this bulky tale with fully developed themes involving topics such as religion and discrimination. Ologrin, for example, whom some call by the Polfre slur, “maleugenate,” has brown skin, unlike the pale-skinned citizens in other cities. The cast of characters, however, is relatively small. The author concentrates more on relationships than on accumulating characters, so he develops Tobin as a convincing paternal figure and allows a delightfully complex romance between Ologrin and Vireo to unfold. Dialogue throughout is sharp and generally contemporary, which is perfectly suited to the largely familiar world and people of an unspecified time. While Krause leaves room for a sequel or even a spinoff, this novel is wholly gratifying as a stand-alone fantasy.
An enthralling coming-of-age story that unfolds in a land both strange and recognizable.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73454-260-8
Page Count: 534
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
Weird and haunting and excellent.
The much-anticipated second novel from the author of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (2004).
The narrator of this novel answers to the name “Piranesi” even though he suspects that it's not his name. This name was chosen for him by the Other, the only living person Piranesi has encountered during his extensive explorations of the House. Readers who recognize Piranesi as the name of an Italian artist known for his etchings of Roman ruins and imaginary prisons might recognize this as a cruel joke that the Other enjoys at the expense of the novel’s protagonist. It is that, but the name is also a helpful clue for readers trying to situate themselves in the world Clarke has created. The character known as Piranesi lives within a Classical structure of endless, inescapable halls occasionally inundated by the sea. These halls are inhabited by statues that seem to be allegories—a woman carrying a beehive; a dog-fox teaching two squirrels and two satyrs; two children laughing, one of them carrying a flute—but the meaning of these images is opaque. Piranesi is happy to let the statues simply be. With her second novel, Clarke invokes tropes that have fueled a century of surrealist and fantasy fiction as well as movies, television series, and even video games. At the foundation of this story is an idea at least as old as Chaucer: Our world was once filled with magic, but the magic has drained away. Clarke imagines where all that magic goes when it leaves our world and what it would be like to be trapped in that place. Piranesi is a naif, and there’s much that readers understand before he does. But readers who accompany him as he learns to understand himself will see magic returning to our world.
Weird and haunting and excellent.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63557-563-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
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