A slog through the bog.
Coming-of-age in Roman-occupied Britain.
Thirteen-year-old Hobble lives with her parents in a small, isolated community at the edge of a bog. Far from the eastern coast, their lives are largely untouched by Emperor Claudius’ desire to claim all of Britannia for Rome. But Hobble knows that this is about to change, because the young seer has had a vision of Romans coming to Black Lake. Her mother, Devout, has bitter recollections of an earlier incursion—and her experiences during that time will have a profound effect on Hobble’s fate. The stories of both daughter and mother unfold in alternating chapters. Buchanan devotes many, many pages to worldbuilding, at the expense of advancing the narrative. Nevertheless, Black Lake and the broader first-century Britain around it never feel like more than a stage set. The characters are mostly flat as well. Devout’s first love, Arc, is representative in that he fits a type but lacks specificity. He is, like Devout, a member of their community’s lowest caste but he is, apparently, singular because he knows “the industry of bees and the magnificence of the nighttime sky.” Contemporary clichés like this don’t do much to help a reader find their way back into an imagined past. The book succeeds best at recalling other books, most particularly Manda Scott’s Dreaming the Serpent Spear. Both authors use Lindow Man—a body uncovered by peat diggers in Northwest England in 1984—in strikingly similar ways. The most distinctive element of Buchanan’s novel is the druid Fox. Historical fiction set in pre-Christian Britain often depicts druids as fonts of ancestral wisdom, as spiritual savants attuned to nature. Fox is not that. He is, instead, a greedy, power-hungry zealot who murders puppies and, ultimately, demands human sacrifice. Beyond this unpleasant character, this novel is unremarkable.
A slog through the bog.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1616-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
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