Intelligent and artfully crafted historical fiction about a religious relic.
In this thriller, set in fifth-century Rome, rivals race to possess Christ’s crown of thorns.
When Roman Gen. Flavius Aetius dies, his son, Gaudentius, discovers the crown of thorns Jesus wore on the day he was crucified. Gaudentius’ mother fears that the relic might fall into Emperor Valentinian’s hands, and so she entrusts it to Senator Felix with the hope that he’ll find a way to smuggle it out of Rome to Constantinople to present it to Patriarch Anatolius. But Senator Felix is murdered, and so the perilous task falls to his daughter, Arria, and her husband, the Frank Noble Garic. Unfortunately, they’re not the only ones who know of the crown’s existence; Marcella, Arria’s half sister, and Drusus, a military commander, pursue it as well. Drusus was once Arria’s husband until he nearly died in battle, and Marcella is resentful of her alienation from Arria’s family and the death of her beloved Severus, whose murder she blames on Garic. In addition, the partnership between Marcella and Drusus is a complicated one—they are both opportunists who have ample reason to distrust and resent each other. Ripley Miller (On the Edge of the Sunrise, 2015) astutely brings to life a Rome teetering precariously on the brink of collapse, increasingly threatened at its borders. She also portrays the tension between paganism and Christianity with subtlety and nuance. This is the second installment of a series, and while it stands well enough on its own—the author makes repeated references to the back story provided in the first book—it’s worth reading the two as a pair. As in the opener, the attention to historical detail creates atmospheric authenticity in this sequel. But while the prose can be elegant, the dialogue is sometimes too Elizabethan: “ ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘Your gaze tells me that something is on your mind—and so soon after our lovemaking?’ ” Nevertheless, the plot advances energetically, and the combination of political and romantic drama—and spiritual as well—is rousing. The reader should be glad to have read this volume and eager for a third.
Intelligent and artfully crafted historical fiction about a religious relic.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Knox Robinson Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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