An epic tale of conflict, sorcery, and religion.
Maidman presents a fantasy series starter set during a brutal war steeped in magic and myth.
At the forefront of the tale is Claire, an immortal in an indeterminate future whose gold palanquin machine can fold space and time. A malfunction sends it hurtling halfway across the world and thousands of years in the past, right in the middle of a military conflict that sees King Ambrosius the Ninth taking over the city of Genova. The king’s general, Marcus Irenaeus Diophantus, is an elite fighter who’s tormented by the terrible things he’s done during wartime. He discovers the crashed palanquin as well as Claire, who’s now just a shadow of her former self: “She was diminished now to mere humanity. She remembered only human things.” Claire soon declares herself a “patricia of Zanzibar” and helps to broker peace throughout the kingdom. But even in peace, danger lurks—whether it’s from the Constantines, who care only for profit and always find it in conflict, or the high priest of Florence, Reburrus, who views Claire with nothing but suspicion. Among the tangled politics, Marcus dedicates himself to helping Claire explore ai Ctesiphôn, a tower in the middle of Florence that only shows itself to certain people and “can be reached from nowhere. Seek the foot of ai Ctesiphôn, and you will walk all day long….” This magical tower may, however, hold the secret to Claire’s return home. Over the course of this first series entry, Maidman stocks the narrative with a wide range of complex characters; indeed, the work begins with a list of players that spans four pages. However, the extensive cast helps to shape a labyrinthine plot that’s presented with patience and sophistication. The work is relatively lengthy at more than 400 pages, but the dialogue remains consistently sharp, and the pace is consistently brisk throughout. Maidman’s remarkable attention to detail—regarding his characters, their kingdoms, and in-universe wizardry—results in a world that audiences won’t want to leave anytime soon.
An epic tale of conflict, sorcery, and religion.Pub Date: June 4, 2023
ISBN: 9798987597811
Page Count: 552
Publisher: Tower Books Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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