An intelligent historical reimagining that fails as dramatic literature.
In Hendrickson’s work of historical fiction, based on the Bible, a young soldier is entrusted with astrological charts that foretell the birth of Christ.
In the year 6 BC, Master Vinda-Farnah, head of the Magi Astronomical Sect, departs Babylon for Jerusalem, convinced that all the signs point to the imminent birth of the “Creator’s promised champion,” the world’s messiah. He travels with sacred star charts of incomparable prophetic value. It’s a dangerous journey, as the Parthian Empire from which he departs exists in a state of conflict with the Roman Empire he plans to enter without any permissions or protection; the complex political context is lucidly fleshed out by the author. Along the way, he’s intercepted and murdered by an assassin sent by another Magi, Master Dvandas, an adviser to Parthian emperor Phraates IV, a rival who wishes to possess the charts himself. Before he dies, Master Vinda-Farnah receives word from a “heavenly messenger” commanding him to entrust the charts to a man named Rassan, a newly minted officer in the Parthian emperor’s garrison who was dispatched to prevent his journey. Master Vinda-Farnah communicates the divine message before he dies, which moves Rassan deeply; per the Magi’s instructions, he’s instructed to deliver the charts to Master Daraya-Vous in Babylon. Rassan not only endeavors to deliver those charts—he becomes an apprentice Magi as well, fulfilling a longstanding desire to pursue a more meaningful destiny. Master Dvandas will stop at nothing to get hold of those charts, however, even if it means murdering Rassan himself.
Hendrickson’s command of the source material is remarkable; the rigorous research he’s conducted, which he details in a prefatory note, is admirably meticulous. While remaining true to the Biblical material, he also painstakingly reconstructs the political intrigues of the time, as well as the cultural context they occurred within. In the interstices of the historical record, he invents a story that combines the religious and supernatural with a serious reflection on the challenges faced by the Magi masters who eagerly anticipated the birth of their messiah. But for all its theological and historical veracity, the novel is considerably less convincing as dramatic fiction. The author tends to resort to soap-operatic melodrama of the kind that leans toward sentimental formulae and thin characterization. Master Dvandas, in particular, is a shell of a character, a pastiche of comic-book villains who sinisterly rub their hands together as they concoct their evil designs. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Rassan, whose unalloyed goodness and decency rob him of all psychological complexity. His bottomless earnestness is matched by the bloodless quality of the author’s prose. Here, Rassan eagerly reflects on the mission he was assigned by Master Vinda Farnah: “Ever since the man placed his hands on him and charged him with his dying words, his eyes have somehow been opened to newer and higher things. He always felt that the Creator would make known what He wanted him to do with his life.” This brew of maudlin sentiment and stale clichés grows tiresome quickly.
An intelligent historical reimagining that fails as dramatic literature.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9798985442571
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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