A promising first installment of a fantasy series about saving two worlds that needs to evolve to become fully realistic and...
A debut middle-grade novel features magical lands, childhood adventure, guardian spirits, and the love of family.
This first volume in a projected fantasy series introduces readers to Wyatt Tobiah, the youngest of four brothers, after Gallard, Maelog, and Augustus. The boys live alone with their father, Dalton, after their mother died nine years ago. Though their father loves them all very much, his career in the energy sciences keeps him extremely busy, and the boys are often left to their own devices. They end up exploring an abandoned manor house, where a mysterious mirror turns out to be a portal to another land. Talia is described as a peaceful and perfect place, and moreover, after her death, the boys’ mother, Arianna, became queen of this realm. The boys travel to Talia and are amazed (“They saw only untainted beauty. The whole land of Talia was unbelievably lush, green, and pristine. There were flowing waterfalls, trees swaying in the wind, rolling hills, and flowers everywhere”). They are told that they must help Arianna save Talia—and ultimately their own world as well—from the malignant machinations of Lucempest. If the boys succeed, not only will they save two worlds, but they will also help their father with his life’s work. And that work, clean energy, is very much at the center of this story. Pollution and humanity’s role in spoiling the planet figure prominently in this wild, tangled tale, a point that is made strongly and often, frequently in a somewhat heavy-handed and didactic manner. At one point, Gallard even gets an essay test on the subject. The formality of the dialogue unfortunately enhances this flaw. Though the main protagonists are young boys, neither they nor anyone else in the tale ever use contractions, giving their speech a robotic, unrealistic air. That’s too bad, because the emotional core of the book resonates powerfully, both in the clear concern for the environment that shows in the bones of the work and in the deeply loving—if occasionally unbelievably idealized—Tobiah family.
A promising first installment of a fantasy series about saving two worlds that needs to evolve to become fully realistic and unreservedly magical.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4848-7328-1
Page Count: 270
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Spanning centuries and continents, this is a darkly romantic and suspenseful tale by a writer at the top of her game.
When you deal with the darkness, everything has a price.
“Never pray to the gods that answer after dark.” Adeline tried to heed this warning, but she was desperate to escape a wedding she didn’t want and a life spent trapped in a small town. So desperate that she didn’t notice the sun going down. And so she made a deal: For freedom, and time, she will surrender her soul when she no longer wants to live. But freedom came at a cost. Adeline didn’t want to belong to anyone; now she is forgotten every time she slips out of sight. She has spent 300 years living like a ghost, unable even to speak her own name. She has affairs with both men and women, but she can never have a comfortable intimacy built over time—only the giddy rush of a first meeting, over and over again. So when she meets a boy who, impossibly, remembers her, she can’t walk away. What Addie doesn’t know is why Henry is the first person in 300 years who can remember her. Or why Henry finds her as compelling as she finds him. And, of course, she doesn’t know how the devil she made a deal with will react if he learns that the rules of their 300-year-long game have changed. This spellbinding story unspools in multiple timelines as Addie moves through history, learning the rules of her curse and the whims of her captor. Meanwhile, both Addie and the reader get to know Henry and understand what sets him apart. This is the kind of book you stay up all night reading—rich and satisfying and strange and impeccably crafted.
Spanning centuries and continents, this is a darkly romantic and suspenseful tale by a writer at the top of her game.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8756-1
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Weird and haunting and excellent.
The much-anticipated second novel from the author of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (2004).
The narrator of this novel answers to the name “Piranesi” even though he suspects that it's not his name. This name was chosen for him by the Other, the only living person Piranesi has encountered during his extensive explorations of the House. Readers who recognize Piranesi as the name of an Italian artist known for his etchings of Roman ruins and imaginary prisons might recognize this as a cruel joke that the Other enjoys at the expense of the novel’s protagonist. It is that, but the name is also a helpful clue for readers trying to situate themselves in the world Clarke has created. The character known as Piranesi lives within a Classical structure of endless, inescapable halls occasionally inundated by the sea. These halls are inhabited by statues that seem to be allegories—a woman carrying a beehive; a dog-fox teaching two squirrels and two satyrs; two children laughing, one of them carrying a flute—but the meaning of these images is opaque. Piranesi is happy to let the statues simply be. With her second novel, Clarke invokes tropes that have fueled a century of surrealist and fantasy fiction as well as movies, television series, and even video games. At the foundation of this story is an idea at least as old as Chaucer: Our world was once filled with magic, but the magic has drained away. Clarke imagines where all that magic goes when it leaves our world and what it would be like to be trapped in that place. Piranesi is a naif, and there’s much that readers understand before he does. But readers who accompany him as he learns to understand himself will see magic returning to our world.
Weird and haunting and excellent.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63557-563-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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