Exciting fare, a yarn well-spun.
Deadly enemies duke it out for control of the Persian throne in Iggulden’s latest historical adventure (The Abbot’s Tale, 2018, etc.).
It’s 401 B.C.E, and King Darius tells his eldest son, Artaxerxes, that one day he must murder his younger brother, Cyrus, when the old man dies. It’s what Darius himself did—it’s what Persian kings did to gain and safeguard their thrones. But the adult Cyrus “knew he had been born loyal” and accepts that he will never be king. So matters get most unbrotherly when Darius dies and the new “god-emperor” Artaxerxes orders his brother executed despite the latter’s protestations of loyalty. Their mother puts a stop to the immediate fratricide, but soon the two enemies gather armies to do battle. The king’s massive array of troops vastly outnumbers that of the underdog Cyrus, who has Spartans, Persians, Greeks, camp followers, scant gold for his mercenaries, and desperately little food. Copious amounts of blood flow and many heads roll in scenes of vicious violence and betrayal. Readers might not want to get too attached to any favorite character, because no one’s fate is guaranteed. There are no dull moments in the tale, because in between battles, Cyrus’ army struggles to live off the land and survive the heat, “a living thing, a tongue of flame that flickered and pressed among the marching men.” Meanwhile, the war cost Artaxerxes “unimaginable sums in gold.” But he is determined: One man will win, and the other “will feed the kites and crows. It is just the way of things.” Valiant Spartans rip into Persian ranks, but the Persians simply replace their dead with an apparently endless supply of fresh troops. This is a well-researched tale of heroism and hardship, honor and betrayal in which anyone’s life can disappear with a filth-tipped arrow or the slash of a kopis.
Exciting fare, a yarn well-spun.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64313-056-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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