Alternately unnerving and heartwarming, this book’s evocation of family life is compelling stuff.
The stories in Felt’s collection tap into the mysteries of childhood, incorporating folklore, ghost stories, and Mormonism along the way.
In this concise book, Felt covers a lot of ground, both thematic and tonal. Some stories tap into the surreal and fantastic, while others parse out family histories in a realistic manner. What unites almost all of them are deft evocations of a child’s perceptions. In several of these stories, words like “Cousins” and “Guest” are capitalized, turning visiting characters into something closer to archetypes. That’s in keeping with the way many of these stories weave in and out of folktales, in which transformations (both in stories and in stories within stories) abound. In one of the latter, a cat slowly transforms into “a Gorbel, which is like a cat but also like a spider, and has no mouth except when it’s eating and no eyes except when it’s looking at something nasty.” But the folkloric elements of these stories aren’t omnipresent. The narrator of “Snow on Snow” recounts how his parents met: His Mormon-missionary father traveled to Sweden, where he met the woman he would marry. Though he’s years from being born, the narrator remains a presence, with periodic commentary like “Now I’m going to do something odd and imagine my parents’ first meeting, from Mom’s point-of-view, in an overtly romantic way.” It’s a sometimes-mannered narrative voice, but it’s also a confident one, which helps to make a familiar storyline feel fresh. In the concluding “The Guest on Summer Island” (with a Tove Jansson epigraph), Felt delves back into history and restrains the more bizarre aspects of his fiction but nonetheless summons power from the history of the landscape around his characters.
Alternately unnerving and heartwarming, this book’s evocation of family life is compelling stuff.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-60938-600-9
Page Count: 142
Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
Fans will gobble up this final battle, in which the characters they love fight desperately to save everything they hold...
The action-packed conclusion to a rich and absorbing fantasy trilogy.
Kell has been taken prisoner in White London, trapped in a collar that dampens his magic. His magical connection to his brother, Prince Rhy—the connection that keeps the prince alive—is weakening. Alucard Emery is helplessly watching Rhy, his former lover, fade as that connection begins to break. The White London magician Holland is being slowly taken over by the dangerous, powerful, Black London “shadow king” known as Osaron. And Osaron has his sights set on devouring the magic-rich prize of Red London. But Lila Bard is ready to do the impossible to save Kell and the world—starting by crossing the barrier between worlds by herself, using her own newfound power, for the first time ever. This third and final book in the Shades of Magic series begins where A Gathering of Shadows (2016) left off and keeps up a breakneck pace as our heroes struggle to find a way to stop a magical demon/god who can possess almost any human host. Schwab has created an apocalyptically powerful villain, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Desperate gambits, magical battles, and meaningful sacrifice make this a thrilling read—and there’s even a little time to further complicate and deepen some of the series’ compelling characters.
Fans will gobble up this final battle, in which the characters they love fight desperately to save everything they hold dear. Schwab has fully delivered on the promise of this inventive and captivating series.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8746-2
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A terrifying new storytelling experience that affirms, even in our darkest moments, that love conquers all.
A female big-rig driver crisscrosses America searching for signs of the wife everyone else thinks is dead.
This spooky third novel by Welcome to Night Vale creator Fink (It Devours!, 2017, etc.) is similarly based on an original podcast and offers a more threatening but equally personal take on the horror genre. Switching from the podcast’s intimate first-person narration, delivered with powerful emotion by actress Jasika Nicole, allows Fink to stretch out into the more remote corners of his mythos while delivering the same scary beats. The main character is Keisha Taylor, whose wife, Alice, disappeared while working for the mysterious Bay and Creek trucking company: “No cause of death. No body. No certainty. There was a disappearance, and after a long and increasingly hopeless search, the presumption of death.” Now Keisha has taken a job with the company as a long-haul driver, which thrusts her firmly into the eerie mythology at work here. Keisha is a fascinating character partially because one of her defining characteristics is chronic anxiety, and it’s a potent imperfection for a character who battles literal monsters on a regular basis. Along the way, Fink unveils the strange universe that swallowed Alice whole, revealing an underground war between two secret societies, time-bending oracles, and other Lovecraft-ian horrors. He also gives Keisha a charismatic ally in Sylvia Parker, a teen on the run who becomes her “anxiety bro,” and a bloodcurdling enemy in the macabre, twisted police officer who stalks her across the span of the country. But the book also tempers its terrors with everyday humanity, portraying the mundane joys of love, the rich fabric of the American countryside, and surreal “Why did the chicken cross the road?” jokes that are a hallmark of the podcast. By the time Keisha learns Alice's fate, readers will realize that this marvelous character is more than the sum of her faceless anxiety or her very real fears.
A terrifying new storytelling experience that affirms, even in our darkest moments, that love conquers all.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-284413-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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