A panoramic, detail-driven historical fantasy that delivers plenty of heroes to root for.
This fantasy debut features a team that hunts monsters from parallel realms during World War I.
It is 1914, and the well-dressed Countess Mathilde von Covey is attending a meeting of “seditious Bosnian Serbs” in Sarajevo’s Kafe Zemljak. There, she encounters the diminutive Gavrilo Princip. He intends to make his mark on history, and, after falling under Covey’s strange spell, he hears her say, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Princip goes on to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, which instigates the Great War. Covey isn’t merely alluring, she’s possessed by the Dream Whisperer, an interdimensional being capable of manipulating human hosts, dreams, and global events. The creature’s true goal is to awaken the Sleepers, unearthly beasts that will act in concert as gate openers, ultimately allowing the Outer Gods to return and breed chaos. A handful of talented individuals have committed to stopping Covey, including Cmdr. Fleming of the British Secret Service; Mycroft Holmes, brother of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes; and Dr. Rebecca Mumm of the Museum of Natural History in Paris. When Covey succeeds in waking two Sleepers, Fleming helps destroy them. The heroes then use a rare travel guide by esoteric scholar Friedrich von Junzt to locate temples in Borneo, Bolivia, and elsewhere that house dormant Sleepers. To protect against interlopers, Covey keeps her manservant, the hulking Moloch, nearby. Yet should anything happen to the Dream Whisperer’s current body, he can always jump to another.
Draym’s series opener is a deep crawl through the historical trenches, the first half of which covers the years 1914 to 1917 before jumping to 1921. Much like Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula novels, this adventure peppers keen-eyed readers with references to everything from Jack the Ripper to 1908’s Tunguska event. Mycroft is a wonderful presence who at one point explains that Arthur Conan Doyle invented the nonexistent Watson to “offset my brother’s brilliance.” Throughout the book, whenever Draym sets a scene, readers are treated to a colossal amount of historical background. Realistic portraits of battlefields like Ypres make the ensuing supernatural moments that much more exciting. The author shows the same impressive flair for bringing believable science to the narrative. After studying a Sleeper’s corpse, Mumm says: “The cell walls are exceptionally rigid,” as in fungi, and yet “one would expect polysaccharides in there as long-chain polymers like chitin.” Readers also get the pulpy descriptions that help any genre piece sing (“A viscous, fluorescent, green liquid was dripping from one of seven eye-sockets”). Truly unexpected is Fleming’s elf lineage. His grandmother wishes for him to join the elves as they slip from Earth—via breaches in reality—because of humanity’s destructive “perpetual economic growth.” Mumm is also gracefully realized as someone who prefers the beauty of nature to that of a church. When the Dream Whisperer does initiate the novel’s most predictable twist, it’s nevertheless thrillingly executed. Draym makes the right choice to skip 1918 and the influenza years. This allows the story to halt in 1921, with the promise of darker horrors, both real and H.P. Lovecraft–inspired, to come.
A panoramic, detail-driven historical fantasy that delivers plenty of heroes to root for.Pub Date: March 29, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-63-158374-0
Page Count: 567
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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