Is Raylene going soft? Well, she's more human and far less distinctive. Unasked, we also get fangs and bats, if not yet any...
Without pause for thought, Priest plunges into a sequel (Bloodshot, 2011, etc.) featuring Seattle vampire thief Raylene Pendle that aims toward comedy and strikes flab.
Raylene, who steals things to order and lives in a warehouse along with her lodgers, street urchins Domino and Pepper and blind vampire Ian Stott, has a new commission from shady auctioneer Horace Bishop: to steal a box of bacula (penis-bones, ha-ha) derived from such legendary creatures as unicorns, gryphons and werewolves. Said bones, thanks to their enormous magic power, are extremely valuable. However, once she arrives at the indicated location, the bones have departed, likewise their former owner's existence, and his shack is about to be blown to shreds by mega-powerful lightning bolts. Back at home, another problem has emerged. Ian's father has mysteriously died in an Atlanta vampire house, and his brother Max in San Francisco is demanding his presence—since, Raylene suspects, Max secretly wants to bump Ian off and rule the roost. Then Horace calls with an update: The bones' new owner is Elizabeth Creed, a schizophrenic genius ex-NASA astrophysicist and now, evidently, a witch. Pausing only to drag her sidekick, ex–Navy SEAL and drag queen Adrian deJesus, along, Raylene decides to tackle both cases at once. Neither proves particularly sensible, consequential or mettlesome. Along the way, we learn far more about Raylene's OCD and other insecurities than we need to. Pages of dreary banter limp past.
Is Raylene going soft? Well, she's more human and far less distinctive. Unasked, we also get fangs and bats, if not yet any capes or hissing.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-345-52062-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A somewhat fragmentary nocturnal shadows Jim Nightshade and his friend Will Halloway, born just before and just after midnight on the 31st of October, as they walk the thin line between real and imaginary worlds. A carnival (evil) comes to town with its calliope, merry-go-round and mirror maze, and in its distortion, the funeral march is played backwards, their teacher's nephew seems to assume the identity of the carnival's Mr. Cooger. The Illustrated Man (an earlier Bradbury title) doubles as Mr. Dark. comes for the boys and Jim almost does; and there are other spectres in this freakshow of the mind, The Witch, The Dwarf, etc., before faith casts out all these fears which the carnival has exploited... The allusions (the October country, the autumn people, etc.) as well as the concerns of previous books will be familiar to Bradbury's readers as once again this conjurer limns a haunted landscape in an allegory of good and evil. Definitely for all admirers.
Pub Date: June 15, 1962
ISBN: 0380977273
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962
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