Anyone with even the slightest interest in genre fiction should be delighted by this whacked-out fantasy novel.
A magician returns to an alternate-universe version of New York City to settle squabbles between two warring queens, battle his nemesis, and save the world.
Fantasy noir isn’t exactly a rare medium these days, but Hugo-nominated writer Polansky (Those Below, 2016, etc.) takes it a vast leap forward with this stand-alone set in a spooky Manhattan where all things are possible. “It would help if you did not think of it as magic,” warns the very first line, and Polansky walks a spectacular high wire here, never plunging into fantasy tropes or steampunk dressage nor losing a noir edge that gives the setting a visceral threat. Our protagonist is M., an ageless mage who leaves Paris behind to return to his old stomping grounds in NYC. Those hoping for an epic fantasy arc will be left wanting, as the book lays out its strange story in stand-alone vignettes. But readers who fall headlong for the book’s nimble style and iconoclastic sense of humor will be hooked. Case in point: the third chapter, in which M. must rescue his friend Boy the Infernal (actually a mean-tempered and very dangerous girl) from the pirates who roam the Gowanus Canal. “How exactly did you manage to get captured by a Gilbert and Sullivan cast?” M. asks Boy after rescuing her. “In a word: acid,” she replies. There's a cocktail party staffed by zombies. There's a bar with exits that lead to a different year. There's a giant cosmic turtle beneath Manhattan who must be lulled back to sleep periodically with Xanax and magic. And there's a war brewing between the White Queen of NYC and her nemesis, the Red Queen of Brooklyn Heights. And at its center, a man who simply wants to see justice and truth prevail and then knock back a drink or 10.
Anyone with even the slightest interest in genre fiction should be delighted by this whacked-out fantasy novel.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68245-038-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Regan Arts
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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 charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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