An impressive fantasy sequel featuring a brave apprentice.
This second volume of a YA series focuses on a teenage girl, her gyrfalcon, and a promise made to her grandfather.
At the age of 11, Brittney Eldras stole a gyrfalcon egg from a nest. She raised the bird to be her friend in her lonely home valley of the Heartland. Two years later, Britt has lost her parents in an avalanche. She and her gyrfalcon, Tatty Mog, are partners in life, hunting and growing up together. One day, her grandfather Winchal Eldras, who is a Wayfinder and able to locate anything, claims that he no longer hears the Finder’s Bell. It should be in the city of G’il Rim, to the south. Granfa, as Britt calls him, passes the Finding on to her, beginning her apprenticeship. She must now venture to G’il Rim and search for the Bell. Increasing her challenges are the Zendi, conquerors who hold the Heartland in an economic death grip. They’re a society that worships albinism and has outlawed any but themselves from owning a gyrfalcon. Britt must also beware the Zendi’s intense superstitions and a prophecy revolving around the deaths of seven court ravens. Should the ravens die, war would recommence in the Heartland. In this sequel, Pattison (Pollen, 2019, etc.) delivers a charismatic YA fantasy that features striking worldbuilding centered on the bond between people and animals. She includes veterinary facts, including details about bumble foot, which occurs when a bird cuts itself with an overlong talon and becomes infected. There are also the Tazi hounds, “a breed of royal and telepathic dogs,” like Lady Jetje. The Zendi prince, Oran Ziggmaccus, is a fabulous villain whose code keeps him from cheating at cards yet he has no problem whipping whomever offends him. These elements (and many more) come together in a visionary palette over which the author executes fine control. In one subtly ominous scene, “albinos enter the middle door” of a shrine while “everyone else goes to a side door.” As the drama crescendos, a key component from the previous volume comes into play. A gorgeous finale illustrates the depths of humanity’s companionship with animals.
An impressive fantasy sequel featuring a brave apprentice.Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62944-123-8
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Mims House
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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