Should satisfy series regulars. Just about.
Final installment of the four-volume fantasy cycle (Monsters of the Earth, 2013, etc.) featuring another existential threat to Carce, Drake’s analogue of Rome circa 30 C.E.
Gaius Alphenus Saxa, an enormously rich senator and absentee governor of Lusitania, speaks with Corylus, soldier, part-dryad, and best friend of Saxa’s son Varus, regarding a plot against him by a rival senator, Sentius, who seemingly covets a magical object, the Ear of the Satyr, believed to be owned by Saxa. Meanwhile, Saxa’s wife, Hedia, receives a delegation from India whose purpose is to plant a vine shoot in honor of the god Bacchus. Varus, a scholar and magician whose powers derive from visitations by the Sibyl, notices magicians among the delegation and befriends one, Bhiku. From him, Varus learns that their sponsor, King Govinda, another very powerful magician, intends to divert Bacchus’ disruptive visitations from India to Italy. But, it emerges, Govinda’s also meddling in sorceries from Anti-Thule, an ancient city menaced by a purulent, voracious, and unstoppable Blight that converts everything living into evil black slime. Soon, our heroes—Hedia; Varus; Saxa’s feisty young daughter, Alphena; Corylus; and their teacher Pandareus, his role here limited to a handful of dull comments—are severally and together involved in various supernatural adventures, battling demons, consorting with gods, fighting dragons, and outwitting evildoers. This plot in summary sounds reasonable, but the individual elements, while imaginative enough, make little sense, and the narrative manifests in strangely blocky, almost mechanical prose reminiscent of late-issue Piers Anthony. The Classical setting is a big plus, as are the characters, who, by now, have thoroughly familiar personalities.
Should satisfy series regulars. Just about.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2081-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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
A somewhat fragmentary nocturnal shadows Jim Nightshade and his friend Will Halloway, born just before and just after midnight on the 31st of October, as they walk the thin line between real and imaginary worlds. A carnival (evil) comes to town with its calliope, merry-go-round and mirror maze, and in its distortion, the funeral march is played backwards, their teacher's nephew seems to assume the identity of the carnival's Mr. Cooger. The Illustrated Man (an earlier Bradbury title) doubles as Mr. Dark. comes for the boys and Jim almost does; and there are other spectres in this freakshow of the mind, The Witch, The Dwarf, etc., before faith casts out all these fears which the carnival has exploited... The allusions (the October country, the autumn people, etc.) as well as the concerns of previous books will be familiar to Bradbury's readers as once again this conjurer limns a haunted landscape in an allegory of good and evil. Definitely for all admirers.
Pub Date: June 15, 1962
ISBN: 0380977273
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962
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