Among the payoffs are plenty of cliffhangers, including one that nicely ushers in the next volume—which fans will await...
Sprawling first installment of a promised quartet involving the usual elements of swords and sorcery but with surprising and pleasing twists.
New Zealand–based YA author Hair spends a great deal of time here worldbuilding, and the fantastic geography that he conjures is both captivating and improbable. Not least of its disbelief-suspending features is a bridge that rises from the depths of the sea every dozen years, allowing the power- and wealth-seeking Magi to mount crusades in the land across the water. Naturally, the residents of that land don’t cotton to the incursions. Neither does every resident of the invading power, whose political complexities are both Byzantine and Mandarin. The Moontide Bridge that adjoins Yuros and Antiopia, some reckon, is the chief cause of their world’s miseries. In its sometimes-pedantic explorations of the racial, class and religious differences that separate the two continents, Hair’s novel swerves into J. K. Rowling territory, while in its mystical geography and anthropology, it often recalls Frank Herbert’s Dune novels. By comparison with these two models, Hair often lays on the fantasy-speak a little thickly: “Most of us have greater aptitude at one or more of the four Classes of the gnosis....My element is fire and I am strongest in Thaumaturgy and hermetic-gnosis.” Yet, as the novel unfolds and Hair charts both its physical features and its actors, bearing such resonant names as Antonin Meiros, Belonius Vult, Gurvon Gyle, Ramita Ankesharan and Cymbellea di Regia, it gathers both speed and force. Hair is adept at building characters as well as worlds, and his attention to his female players is welcome in a genre that too often excludes them. The tangles of place names and walk-ons require concentration on the reader’s part, but in the end, the story is satisfying enough to make the effort worthwhile.
Among the payoffs are plenty of cliffhangers, including one that nicely ushers in the next volume—which fans will await eagerly.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62365-014-8
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Jo Fletcher/Quercus
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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