Willis has a delightful comic voice, but it’s hard to imagine who the audience is supposed to be for this book. Concerned...
A passionate rant about books being lost to changing document-preservation practices, lightly disguised as a novella.
Willis (Crosstalk, 2016, etc.) may be best known for her vast time-travel fantasies, which she typically spins out over five or six hundred pages; this 88-page story is being published as a stand-alone. The narrator, Jim, a blogger with a tenuous grasp of Manhattan geography, has come to town to meet with publishers about his blog, Gone for Good, which celebrates the disappearance of outdated technologies such as payphones and VHS tapes. It would be fine with him if bookstores were to die out, he tells a radio interviewer, “because it would mean that society didn’t need them anymore, just like it stopped needing buggy whips and elevator operators, so it shed them, just like a snake sheds its skin.” Losing his way in a cloudburst, he takes refuge in what he takes for an old-fashioned used bookshop. For some reason, a frenetically busy employee offers to give him a tour; the establishment turns out to be vast, full of obscure titles like Herman Melville’s The Isle of the Cross and Jim’s childhood favorite, Ambush in Apache Canyon. Readers will immediately grasp what takes Jim dozens of pages to understand (perhaps because, unlike us, he doesn’t know he’s a character in a fantasy): that this is no shop but a magical repository for books whose every copy has been destroyed.
Willis has a delightful comic voice, but it’s hard to imagine who the audience is supposed to be for this book. Concerned bibliophiles will find far more coherent nonfiction discussions of literary loss—Nicholson Baker’s Double Fold springs to mind—while fans of Willis' fiction should probably stick to her novels, which feature fully drawn characters instead of straw men.Pub Date: April 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-59606-876-6
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
A fine addition to a deservedly well-loved body of work.
All your old T-shirts and bumper stickers inscribed “Frodo Lives” may have to be replaced.
Old Hobbits do die hard—but there are none even born yet in this reconstructed tale of Middle Earth during the Elder Days (i.e., thousands of years prior to events immortalized in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy). Begun in 1918, revised several times, never published (though a capsule version of its narrative appears as a chapter in the posthumously published volume The Silmarillion), this appealing yarn is very nearly vintage Tolkien. To be sure, Middle Earth is under siege early in its history. The reigning villain is Dark Lord Morgoth (Sauron is merely one of his lieutenants), a demonic sort who rules a huge northern fortress ringed by mountains and destroys his enemies through the focused power of his malevolent will—more often than not incarnated in the figure of Glaurung, an exceedingly nasty “dragon of fire.” Their vengeful energies seek out two inordinately plucky youngsters—stalwart Túrin and his beautiful sister Nienor—who share the curse pronounced on their father Húrin, an intrepid Elfin warrior who had brazenly defied Morgoth. The episodic narrative takes off when Húrin leaves his sister and their mother Morwen (a veritable Penelope patiently awaiting her Ulysses’s return) to undertake a series of adventures that involve him with a brawling band of outlaws, the memorable Battle of Unnumbered Tears against what seem innumerable hordes of invading Orcs—remember them?), a duplicitous dwarf who offers the “shelter” of his underground stronghold and a terrific climactic encounter with the…uh, inflamed Glaurung. Strong echoes of the Finnish epic Kalevala, the tales of Robin Hood, Homeric epic and the matter of Wagnerian opera charge the text with complexity as well as vigor. And introductory and textual notes provided by the volume’s editor, Tolkien’s son Christopher, add welcome clarification.
A fine addition to a deservedly well-loved body of work.Pub Date: April 17, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-618-89464-2
Page Count: 313
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
A moderately promising entry that should find an audience.
Larkwood's debut, the first of a fantasy series, begins in familiar fashion as a warrior-maiden adventure and gradually develops into a love story.
In this imaginative but never fully convincing universe, places may be reached via magical gates leading through a maze of dead and dying worlds. Magic powers derive from a rare, innate ability combined with power vouchsafed by a patron god. Csorwe is of a hominin race that sports tusks—these are functionless and, unfortunately, impossible to visualize without thinking "piggish." In a narrative rendered in crisp, vivid prose, Csorwe serves the oracular shrine of a god—the Unspoken Name—but is destined soon to sacrifice herself. Then Sethennai, a wizard—his race has Spock ears—requesting a prophesy about the mysterious and powerful Reliquary of Pentravesse, offers her a choice: serve him and live, or marry the god and die. Csorwe chooses life and becomes Sethennai's ninja. The wizard, formerly the ruler of the city Tlaanthothe, needs her to help reclaim his position from a scheming rival. Later, during a quest to secure the Reliquary, she will clash with the Qarsazhi, imperial interworld extortionists, and their powerful young wizard Shuthmili, who's fated to be absorbed by their enforcement arm but, like Csorwe, never conceived other possibilities. Until this point, the story meanders, but finally the author finds a unique voice no longer dependent on boilerplate action, chases, escapes, torture, and fights. And when Csorwe and Shuthmili meet and fumble toward a relationship, we recognize heartfelt emotion, real substance, and an emergent theme: loyalties and the choices we make that engender them. These, along with the strong female leads, are solid foundations upon which to build.
A moderately promising entry that should find an audience.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-23890-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
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