A fantasy novel creates an engrossing, original world, even if the story about a powerful wanderer veers off course in its...
A talented outcast with the ability to speak to animals leaves his simple, close-knit society to explore other lands, meet unfamiliar civilizations, and engage new ideas about love, reality, and death.
The Traeppedelfere are a cave-dwelling, mountain race, smithies and hunters with no concept of family but an intense need to be with others of their kind, lest they fall into a fatal trance known as drygeslaep. Immune to this condition is the hunter Monwyrt, gifted with an ability to call the beasts he hunts to him, at times even compelling them to obey his commands. In the forest he meets a Waeccelang, a legendary being that transcends space itself, whose own people once unlocked the full power of this ability to disastrous results. As an act of redemption, it now teaches new inheritors how to awaken and wield the skills of thought-reading, perception control, and immediate mastery of any language. While still exploring and developing his new powers, Monwyrt gives into the wanderlust that sets him apart from other Traeppedelfere, departing on a journey recalling Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, full of animals and societies both odd and alien in nature. Botkin’s (The Curious Incident of the Gooneybird, 2016) novel is split into two distinct sections, each written over 20 years apart, a fact easily apparent in their difference in tone. The first is a master class in fantasy worldbuilding, showcasing not just new races and creatures, but also creating entire cultures, complete with customs, laws, unique words, and quirks of language. These details allow even minor characters to shine, while further emphasizing the power Monwyrt wields in navigating languages. Much of this, regrettably, falls into the background in the second half—as Monwyrt’s travels end and he discovers the concept of family, the tale’s focus turns to his children’s developing powers and other gifted Traeppedelferes, along with the wonders and threats they foreshadow. There’s a pronounced eroticism and a greater presence of sex in this section as well, which feels particularly discordant with the first. But an unexpected and often dark sense of humor is present throughout, and there’s a real joy present in the book’s wordplay, from a delightfully simple invented swear word to whip-smart dialogue.
A fantasy novel creates an engrossing, original world, even if the story about a powerful wanderer veers off course in its second half.Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4943-8168-4
Page Count: 578
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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