First-rate, refreshingly female protagonists worthy of a multivolume fantasy tale.
A handful of adventurers and warriors may be the heroines needed to champion a land besieged by violence and a steady moral decline in this debut novel and series opener.
Longtime friends Ravage and Patsy satisfy the former’s “penchant for vengeance” by chasing a group of bandits who savagely murdered a family. After narrowly surviving clashes with vicious creatures and phantoms, the two women continue their journey through the land of Sapphiron and stop in Menark, a merchant village, for food and supplies. Mercenaries known as the Scarlet Blades, who need no provocation, assault Ravage and Patsy, but powerful female warrior Akella comes to their aid and defeats the men in combat. Akella, one of the (not quite human) Surangi race, is accompanied by her sister Crystal and friend Melody. They plan to reunite with some Surangi in the city of Leesa, but Akella heads off on her own. While she confronts—often aggressively—unsavory men who victimize people (or wolf cubs used as bait for capturing wolves), Ravage and Patsy help the inexplicably disappearing townsfolk of Sigwood. But trouble’s on the way: Scarlet Blades leader Baron Nade, assuming formidable Akella’s a witch, sends sorceress Matearla to hunt down the heroines. Forrester’s fantasy story is dominated by laudable female characters, making it easy to forget that the villains are primarily male—and generally atrocious. Ravage and Patsy are admirable, fearlessly facing beasts in others’ defense, while Akella’s valiance may be questionable: is striking down a man who’s already surrendered, for example, an unnecessarily brutal act? The author excels at describing otherworldly beings (the six-eyed, black-beaked, saliva-dripping tohern), complemented by Isailovic’s crisp, detailed illustrations (one of them stars a wide-mouthed banshee). Not all men are evil, but the standout among the baddies is Matearla, who lists murder “in the top three” of her “favorite activities.” Characters introduced late have little chance for development, but it’s clear, especially with someone’s divine encounter, that Forrester’s priming readers for subsequent installments.
First-rate, refreshingly female protagonists worthy of a multivolume fantasy tale.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5454-5283-7
Page Count: 376
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An expertly spun yarn by one of the best fantasy writers on the scene today.
Tolkien meets AI as Bennett (City of Stairs, 2014, etc.) returns with a busy, action-packed sequel to Foundryside (2018), neatly blending technology, philosophy, and fantasy.
Tevanne is a medieval-ish city-state made up of four “campos,” each controlled by a merchant guild. One lies in ruins, the outer wall now “little more than masonry and rubble about ten feet high.” The sight causes Sancia Grado, the nimble thief introduced in Foundryside, to wonder, “Did I do that?” Well, yes—and much more besides. Though in ruins, the campo still plays a role in the current proceedings even as Sancia and her cohort—Gregor, Orso, and other Foundrysiders with nicely Shakespearean names—start things off by trying to run a confidence game on the hitherto unexplored Michiel campo. As ever, things get complicated when the objects in Sancia’s world manifest consciousness through a clever process of programming called “scriving.” When a formidable foe named Crasedes Magnus enters the scene, having scrived himself into near invincibility, Sancia realizes she’s got her work cut out for her if Tevanne is going to survive and remain a playground for her mischief. The insider language comes thick and fast as Bennett spins out his story: “She’d never really had the opportunity to handle the imperiat much,” he tells us, “and unlike most scrived devices, she had difficulty engaging with hierophantic rigs.” Still, old-fashioned tools come in handy, as when Gregor dispatches an unfortunate watchman with his sword: “Orso saw hot blood splash his invisible barrier, and the soldier collapsed into the waters, pawing at his throat.” Vorpal blades won’t do much against Crasedes, though, for whom Bennett gives a fine backstory amid all the mayhem. It’s up to Sancia, as ever, to divine the magical means to make him rue his ways—or, as he thinks, as the very stones of Tevanne rise up to fight against him, “This…is not how I wanted things to go.”
An expertly spun yarn by one of the best fantasy writers on the scene today.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6038-0
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Intermittently lumpy and self-indulgent, but enormously entertaining throughout. And the Gaiman faithful—as hungry for...
The West African spider-trickster god Anansi presides benignly over this ebullient partial sequel to Gaiman’s award-winning fantasy American Gods (2001).
In his earthly incarnation as agelessly spry “Mr. Nancy,” the god has died, been buried and mourned (in Florida), and has left (in England) an adult son called Fat Charlie—though he isn’t fat; he is in fact a former “boy who was half a god . . . broken into two by an old woman with a grudge.” His other “half” is Charlie’s hitherto unknown brother Spider, summoned via animistic magic, thereafter an affable quasi-double and provocateur who steals Charlie’s fiancé Rosie and stirs up trouble with Charlie’s blackhearted boss, “weasel”-like entrepeneur-embezzler Grahame Coats. These characters and several other part-human, part-animal ones mesh in dizzying comic intrigues that occur on two continents, in a primitive “place at the end of the world,” in dreams and on a conveniently remote, extradition-free Caribbean island. The key to Gaiman’s ingenious plot is the tale of how Spider (Anansi) tricked Tiger, gaining possession of the world’s vast web of stories and incurring the lasting wrath of a bloodthirsty mortal—perhaps immortal—enemy. Gaiman juggles several intersecting narratives expertly (though when speaking as omniscient narrator, he does tend to ramble), blithely echoing numerous creation myths and folklore motifs, Terry Southern’s antic farces, Evelyn Waugh’s comic contes cruel, and even—here and there—Muriel Spark’s whimsical supernaturalism. Everything comes together smashingly, in an extended dénouement that pits both brothers against all Tiger’s malevolent forms, resolves romantic complications satisfactorily and reasserts the power of stories and songs to represent, sustain and complete us. The result, though less dazzling than American Gods, is even more moving.
Intermittently lumpy and self-indulgent, but enormously entertaining throughout. And the Gaiman faithful—as hungry for stories as Tiger himself—will devour it gratefully.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-051518-X
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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