Stirring sci-fi action that should appeal to fans who applaud the introduction “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.”
A space princess tries to halt a terrible war—seemingly prompted by her father—while facing an appointment with execution at the hands of the mysterious Green Knight.
The first in a Space Lore series by prolific sci-fi author Dietzel (The Theta Prophecy, 2015, etc.), this novel brings a Lucasfilm vibe to select bits of Arthurian romance and legend (with a few character names and themes from Shakespeare thrown in—for good measure-for-measure). For six years, Vere CasterLan, princess in a space monarchy, has dwelled in self-exile with rogues and thieves, far away from her treacherous royal family. She fled a Hamlet situation in which her father, King Artan of the CasterLan Empire, remarried unwisely—and commanded Vere to wed the heir to the rival Vonnegan Empire soon after the curious disappearance of her true love. Now the king is dying, and he has apparently ordered an unprovoked attack in Vonnegan territory, resulting in war. Vere and her motley crew of frenemies and allies (including a giant reptile, a sort of Chewbacca figure) race to sort out what she considers a dreadful misunderstanding; meanwhile, bounty hunters from all over the galaxy seek her death. Threatening to overstuff the narrative, though, is the title figure, the enigmatic Green Knight (borrowed from the medieval tale of Sir Gawain), who was beheaded by Vere in a tavern confrontation yet survived. He now embraces her vow that she will seek him out on her home planet within seven days to receive a return blow. Perils gradually whittle down Vere’s band of loyalists, and Dietzel proves a master at the larger-than-life ensemble swashbuckling of Joseph Campbellian–infused space opera. The switch in traditional leadership roles, with strong heroines trading places with male heroes, comes off painlessly, and a forceful space-battle climax is worthy of author E.E. “Doc” Smith himself. Celtic-myth flavor seldom seems forced or mashuplike, and further installments in the Space Lore books promise to bring additional bits of Camelot into the exciting universe Dietzel has created.
Stirring sci-fi action that should appeal to fans who applaud the introduction “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.”Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 418
Publisher: Watch the World End Publications
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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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