A whimsical and ultimately touching story of love and the afterlife.
A grieving widow goes on a serious of otherworldly adventures in Croop’s debut novel.
Adalyn believes she’s finally found love with a man named Matthew when the Covid-19 pandemic strikes; after a brief illness, Matthew dies. Shortly afterward, Adalyn sits on a neighborhood park bench and complains to the Creator she’s always worshipped: “God, I love you, but how could you do this to me?” she asks. “How could you when you know I’ve suffered enough?” And surprisingly, she gets an answer: “God has His reasons.” The speaker is Lenny, an angel and former ghost whom Adalyn already knows. Through their conversations, Croop ably fleshes out an elaborate fantasy cosmology, loosely based on aspects of Christianity. Lenny recently broke up with Matthew’s guardian angel, Melanie, who’s applied to Heaven’s Rebirth Application Offices to be reborn as a mortal; he saw Adalyn grieving from heaven’s watchtower and decided to offer her comfort. He takes her by the hand and brings her to the “ghost train,” complete with a conductor, which will take her to heaven; there, she’s issued an one-day pass to look for Matthew and spend a bit more time with him. In the process, she gets involved with her guardian angel, Maurice, and his real-world adventures back on Earth. Over the course of this novel, Croop relates Adalyn’s adventures and inner thoughts with a good deal of warmth and approachability. The characters are thinly conceived but uniformly fun, and the plotline involving Maurice and the thugs who threaten his legacy makes for engaging reading. Along the way, the author sometimes turns religious concepts like heaven and angels into fodder for humor: “It was common knowledge that the ringing of a bell meant an angel got its wings….it was possible to simply buy wings in heaven. I suppose it all made sense since the cash register bell rang after every purchase.”
A whimsical and ultimately touching story of love and the afterlife.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-956074-72-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Global Summit House
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.
A fantasy adventure with a sometimes-biting wit.
Tress is an ordinary girl with no thirst to see the world. Charlie is the son of the local duke, but he likes stories more than fencing. When the duke realizes the two teenagers are falling in love, he takes Charlie away to find a suitable wife—and returns with a different young man as his heir. Charlie, meanwhile, has been captured by the mysterious Sorceress who rules the Midnight Sea, which leaves Tress with no choice but to go rescue him. To do that, she’ll have to get off the barren island she’s forbidden to leave, cross the dangerous Verdant Sea, the even more dangerous Crimson Sea, and the totally deadly Midnight Sea, and somehow defeat the unbeatable Sorceress. The seas on Tress’ world are dangerous because they’re not made of water—they’re made of colorful spores that pour down from the world’s 12 stationary moons. Verdant spores explode into fast-growing vines if they get wet, which means inhaling them can be deadly. Crimson and midnight spores are worse. Ships protected by spore-killing silver sail these seas, and it’s Tress’ quest to find a ship and somehow persuade its crew to carry her to a place no ships want to go, to rescue a person nobody cares about but her. Luckily, Tress is kindhearted, resourceful, and curious—which also makes her an appealing heroine. Along her journey, Tress encounters a talking rat, a crew of reluctant pirates, and plenty of danger. Her story is narrated by an unusual cabin boy with a sharp wit. (About one duke, he says, “He’d apparently been quite heroic during those wars; you could tell because a great number of his troops had died, while he lived.”) The overall effect is not unlike The Princess Bride, which Sanderson cites as an inspiration.
Engrossing worldbuilding, appealing characters, and a sense of humor make this a winning entry in the Sanderson canon.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781250899651
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
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