This uneventful novel feels like a prelude to the rest of the saga, setting the stage for events that will come later.
The first book in a planned high fantasy series.
Bowen (The Sable Valley, 2013) introduces Coe Baba, a small medieval town with a long history of traditions. Basha, the innkeeper's adopted son is in love with Jawen, the daughter of the town's wealthy merchant. Their secret love affair is about to be made public with Coe Baba's annual courtship ritual. However, when Basha asks for Jawen's hand he makes a bold promise to her, offering her the cup of Tau, a possibly mythical object believed to be in a far distant land. The promise and the verdict of the local oracle set the stage for a quest to be undertaken by Basha and others. While the villagers do not entirely believe in the existence of magic and live simple lives, there are some who seem to touched by magic like Basha and his adoptive brother Oaka. There are also legends surrounding good and evil and an evil figure known as Doomba whose presence makes itself known in Coe Baba through those whose bodies he has invaded. The narrative tends to jump around in time so that certain events such as the courtship ritual can be examined from different perspectives. Immediately after seeing things through Basha's eyes, the narrative jumps back in time to give Jawen's take on the event. While the main portion of the narrative covers only a few days, there are several flashbacks to earlier events. Most of the second half of the book is a series of flashbacks providing detailed explanations of events in Basha's young life and the history of his relationship with Jawen. While the book is primarily told in the third person, there are later chapters written in the first person from the perspective of Nisa, a woman who has for many years watched over Basha without his knowledge. An attempt is made to describe a love triangle with Iibala, another girl interested in Basha, but this comes off feeling like it's been lifted from a modern teen drama. Readers are told, "Basha had been only thirteen or fourteen at the time he started dating Iibala, but he had been worried all of the time that he was dating her that she might leave him, jealous of the other young men who had once dated her." (59) Despite this drama the Basha-Jawen love story seems a bit tepid.
This uneventful novel feels like a prelude to the rest of the saga, setting the stage for events that will come later.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-1492153757
Page Count: 384
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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