An often deft blend of emotional drama and historical reconstruction.
A sister and brother are orphaned and separated when war arrives at their Judean village in this novel of the ancient world.
In 135 B.C.E., Keziah, who’s not yet a teenager, lives in precarious circumstances: Her mother has leprosy, a disease that the family hides from their fellow villagers, and nearby Jerusalem is under siege by Greeks from the Seleucid Empire. One day, Keziah returns home to find her house on fire, and she witnesses the savage murders of both her parents and her younger brother, Moshe; her neighbors had discovered her family’s dark secret. A kind Iturean trader and a shopkeeper help her escape death, and she makes her way to Galilee, where she has family. Meanwhile, her older brother, Joazar, is taken captive by the Greek invaders and is made the servant of Jugurtha, who was once enslaved but is now the head of the treasury. Jugurtha attempts to school Joazar in what he sees as the ways of the world—a bottomless cynicism that profoundly challenges Joazar’s faith, as Potter eloquently depicts: “The ease with which he discarded childhood superstitions was proof of something he chose not to name.” The author’s research is impeccable over the course of the novel, although there’s an occasional tendency to bombard the reader with minute details of the day’s political conflicts. However, his prose can also turn leaden and grave, almost as if it’s meant to be carved in marble: “Humankind’s role was simple: skirt the attention of the gods, seek their clemency or succour only as much as needed, and revel in as much godlike madness as circumstance allowed. The only difference between slave and king was means.” Nonetheless, this is a magisterial work of ancient worldbuilding, and a dramatically affecting one, as well, as both siblings struggle to repair their broken lives—Keziah takes solace in a new family and her musical talent while Joazar desperately looks for her—and their desire for peace is repeatedly frustrated.
An often deft blend of emotional drama and historical reconstruction.Pub Date: March 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-77730-732-5
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Paper Stone Press
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
