A slow-paced fantasy series installment that lacks a truly climactic showdown.
The third volume in Bowen’s (Servants and Followers, 2014, etc.) epic-fantasy Legends of Arria series.
This latest installment continues the saga of the new Knights of Arria and the citizens of the town of Coe Baba. As the book opens, the residents are recovering from a violent clash with the evil Doomba and his followers. As the people blame one another for the destruction, a small group realizes they have something in common: They all have different kinds of magical powers. They form an unlikely, somewhat fractious alliance to protect their community from the forces of the evil Doomba. Meanwhile, Basha and Oaka (with their friends Monika and Gnat) continue on their own quest for Tau’s Cup, but now that they know they are also the fabled Knights of Arria, they must learn how to properly wield their swords and magic. The group faces trying times as they struggle to use their powers while also dealing with Doomba and his followers’ threats to their survival and freedom. The book’s conclusion sets the stage for at least one more book in the series. Readers of the previous books will welcome this installment’s familiar characters and notice a few new ones, including the bard Jobe, who joins the Knights; they may also be interested in how magic plays a more prominent role. As in past installments, the points of view and settings jump around, and the story progresses slowly, in part, because of these shifts. The book also often presents characters’ thoughts in a clunky fashion: “Monika was not certain if she could truly love [Basha], especially when he was so attached to Jawen and had started out on this quest, after all, to retrieve Tau’s Cup for Jawen so that they could get married.” The author uses ellipses repeatedly to create tension (“She couldn’t risk everything, not even for…”; “I just want to…”), which further slows the pace. As a result, readers eager to learn the fates of Basha and Oaka may become frustrated.
A slow-paced fantasy series installment that lacks a truly climactic showdown.Pub Date: July 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500425333
Page Count: 488
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A strong, thoughtful, and fast-paced follow-up that bodes well for future volumes.
In the second installment of a political fantasy thriller series where “bioenergetic jade” provides magical energy, the conflict of two warlord/organized crime clans has global implications.
In the Hong Kong-like city of Janloon, the Mountain and No Peak clans have announced a public truce while each secretly tries to undermine the other for control of the city and their nation of Kekon, the only source of the jade. As jade smugglers both inside and outside the country threaten the clans’ mutual control over the mineral, political tensions rise between the neighboring nations of Espenia and Ygutan over a rebellion in Shotar, which leads both to seek more jade for their armies. Meanwhile, Hilo, the former Horn (chief enforcer) of the No Peak clan, struggles to master the tactics he needs to fill his late brother’s role as Pillar (clan leader). His sister, Shae, the clan’s Weather Man (chief advisor), has that tactical knowledge but lacks the clan’s complete trust; she’s also trying to juggle her clan responsibilities and her personal life, which includes a quiet romance with a nonclan professor. At the same time, their adopted brother, Anden, embarks on a new, jade-free life in Espenia but still manages to find trouble there, and Hilo’s jade-immune wife, Wen, secretly supports the clan through her own work as a spy. If they are to prevail against the ruthless Ayt Mada, Pillar of the Mountain clan, and the various other domestic and foreign threats, terrible sacrifices will be required, made willingly or not. The first installment, Jade City (2017), leaned rather heavily, albeit effectively, on some tropes and plot points from The Godfather, and it’s pleasing to see that the author has chosen a more independent path this time around. If there’s any thematic link between this book and Godfather II, it’s a common understanding that the outside world has a way of crashing into isolated communities and forcing them to adapt, so it’s best to be on the offensive, as well as a rueful acknowledgment that despite that understanding, relationships with those outside the community might not end well.
A strong, thoughtful, and fast-paced follow-up that bodes well for future volumes.Pub Date: July 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-44092-9
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
None
Vampires are getting classier. Rice's formidable Lestat (given a bad press by his protege Louis in the author's Interview With a Vampire, 1976) sets the record straight with his story—from 18th-century fang-y to 20th-century rock star—all in Rice's faintly erotic, red-velvet-tasseled prose, festooned with swags of philosophical-theological expository flights, intra-vampirian warfare and sanguinary nightcaps. The seventh son of an impecunious French nobleman, Lestat, the family hunter and wolf-killer, who with his soul-mate Nicholas, another rebel, pondered the "meaninglessness" of the universe, was initiated into the Dark Gifts of the vampire in Paris. All, the "taste and feel of blood when all passion and greed is sharpened in that one desire!" But Lestat as vampire is in trouble almost immediately with the vampire establishment, since he loves living as a mortal and wants to do good. To save his beloved mother from an imminent death, there's that blood-for-blood ceremony, and zingo! Mother becomes the luscious "Gabrielle," charter coven member. She'll join him in a sectarian battle with Vampire Armand's cemetery gang, who've captured Nicholas (Lestate rescues him but later can't resist merging circulatory systems). Eventually, in narratives by Armand. and Marius, keeper of ancient Egyptian gods and vampirian annals. Lestat will learn of the vampires' complex history. It's rooted in Earth Mother cults and took on the coloration of various periods and places—hence the sectarian battling of demonic immortals. Rice dots Lestat's tale with some marvelous chillers: a giant killer-god on the march; a splendid crypt entrance before a terrified congregation; night prowls and rock-concert screams with telltale "tiny white faces" in the San Francisco audience. But worry not: vampire rules dictate that mortals are perfectly safe in Vampire Bars. A vampire bonanza in appropriate dark, humid, spider-web narrative—Rice's specialty. One giant step beyond Bela.
None
NonePub Date: Oct. 31, 1985
ISBN: 0345419642
Page Count: 680
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1985
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
