An intriguing work that embodies the ferocity of a woman wronged while contemplating complex questions of home and country.
In this debut historical novel, Treviso tells the story of the Sicilian Vespers, a bloody 13th-century revolt of the Sicilian people against occupying French Angevin powers.
This tale is told through multiple perspectives but centers on a “maiden turned monster turned myth”—referring to Aetna Vespiri, the daughter of a Sicilian winemaker and knight, as well as to Medusa, the Greek mythological figure who features on the Vespiri family crest and symbolizes the determination of the oppressed to avenge injustice. When Aetna’s father dies at the hands of the Angevin cavalry’s commanding officer, Guy de Rochefort, she becomes set on freeing Sicily from French tyranny. This setup allows Treviso to tell a broader story of how Sicilian freedom and nationhood are won. Major storylines follow a mysterious mercenary in the French forces known as “Brother Devil” or Fra’Diavulu, as well as the Knights of the Teutonic Order, a group of Sicilian knights in exile who are loyal to the deposed Sicilian prince, Conradin. The novel is divided into four main sections, with each one featuring a map of regions relevant to the plot alongside excerpts from key character Don Rapaci’s account of the War of the Vespers. Treviso shows thoroughness and consistency while maintaining a snappy prose style and keeping up momentum with short, suspenseful chapters. The work balances education with action, providing a constant flow of historical facts; it even closes with recipes that feature within the story. The author also crucially highlights the diversity of the Sicilian people and their mixed Norman, Arab, and Greek heritages. Siciliana, her friend and fellow rebel Tziporah, and the French royal vicar Herbert Orleans’ daughter Manon Orleans play major roles throughout the proceedings, and Treviso depicts them all with nuance. Don Rapaci and Fra’Diavulu also have compelling backstories that help to drive the plot forward. The last third of the book offers major twists that will keep readers engaged.
An intriguing work that embodies the ferocity of a woman wronged while contemplating complex questions of home and country.Pub Date: March 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-7374577-1-8
Page Count: 487
Publisher: Trevixo Originale Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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