The work of a true master of her much maligned genre. If you love history, do not under any circumstances overlook or...
Prior to 1066, Bloodie Olde Englande was a fine arena for politically inflected combat—and veteran historical novelist Holland is just the writer to bring it back to life.
In this rousing sequel to The High City (2009), and the concluding volume of a series begun with The Soul Thief (2002), Holland connects numerous attempts to dethrone borderline-scumbag monarch Ethelred (the Unready) with the tale of itinerant adventurer Raef Corbanson, recently returned from Constantinople and now having cast his lot with displaced Scandinavians residing in the Viking town of Jorvik. The complex plot knits Raef’s seemingly inherited out-of-body powers with his pursuit by the vindictive wraith of the Lady of Hedeby (a nemesis prominently featured in earlier volumes), who is herself empowered to “enter” others’ bodies (e.g., that of Ethelred’s somewhat dumpy current consort). Such outbreaks of supernaturalism seem suited to a culture grounded in folklore and magic, and add vigorous counterpoint to Holland’s sure-handed deployment of conflicting acts of aggression and conquest (at one point, no fewer than five forces contend for Ethelred’s crown), which eventually embrace the Unready one’s stalwart progeny Aethelstan and Edmund; powerful Danish king Sweyn Forkbeard and his sons (bloodthirsty Harald and innately noble Knut, later Canute); Ethelred’s unconscionable enforcer Eadrich Streona; murderous Jomsviking mercenary leader Thorkel the Tall; and a dozen or so other slashers, burners and co-conspirators. Holland’s battle scenes are brilliantly, viscerally detailed, and she’s even better in quieter scenes that provide illuminating contrasts—notably, those revealing the impulse of Raef’s embattled wife Laissa toward the strange new doctrine of Christianity, and the struggles of ill-fated heir to the throne Edmund to honor his essentially dishonorable father.
The work of a true master of her much maligned genre. If you love history, do not under any circumstances overlook or underestimate Cecelia Holland.Pub Date: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2192-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2010
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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