A complex, entertaining fantasy that sets loose a “chosen one” hero arc among the dogs of war.
A young Oxford student discovers his mystical destiny on the eve of World War II.
Prolific <i>Star Trek</i> novelist Mack (The Calling, 2009, etc.) steps out of his comfort zone with this sprawling, ambitious fantasy novel, the first of a trilogy. Our hero is Cade Martin, an American graduate student pursuing his degree at Oxford in 1939 when he and his parents are forced to flee the oncoming war. But a sea monster appears midocean, killing Cade’s parents and leaving him stranded. He’s rescued by Adair Macrae, a wily old Scotsman and the leader of the Midnight Front, a top-secret cadre of sorcerers operating under the banner of the United Kingdom. Macrae explains that Cade is a nikraim, a human bonded before birth with the essence of an angel, imbued with paranormal abilities rooted in Renaissance-era ceremonial “magick.” As happens, these abilities come from harnessing the power of actual demons, which brings a terrible cost. After the obligatory training montage, the Midnight Front heads to Europe in pursuit of its enemy, a powerful black mage called Kein Engel, a “karcist” working on behalf of Adolf Hitler. Engel and his two dangerous adepts are setting a trap for the Allied invasion of France: “One that can unleash a legion from Hell, without instruction or restriction, to wreak havok on the earth until I am satisfied it has laid waste Science’s decadent modern world,” he explains. Mack’s novel is heavy on the universe-building, but it's also propulsive, with well-crafted characters and cinematic set pieces culled from the war’s most momentous crossroads. Equal parts brimstone and gunpowder, the book deftly mixes the tropes of high fantasy into a semirealistic portrayal of WWII, resulting in an entertaining scenario that wouldn’t be out of place in a video game or a spirited match of Dungeons & Dragons. The sequels promise to bring the story postwar into the 1950s and '60s.
A complex, entertaining fantasy that sets loose a “chosen one” hero arc among the dogs of war.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8320-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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
Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.
Self-assured, entertaining debut novel that blends genres and crosses continents in quest of magic.
The world’s not big enough for two wizards, as Tolkien taught us—even if that world is the shiny, modern one of the late 19th century, with its streetcars and electric lights and newfangled horseless carriages. Yet, as first-time novelist Morgenstern imagines it, two wizards there are, if likely possessed of more legerdemain than true conjuring powers, and these two are jealous of their turf. It stands to reason, the laws of the universe working thus, that their children would meet and, rather than continue the feud into a new generation, would instead fall in love. Call it Romeo and Juliet for the Gilded Age, save that Morgenstern has her eye on a different Shakespearean text, The Tempest; says a fellow called Prospero to young magician Celia of the name her mother gave her, “She should have named you Miranda...I suppose she was not clever enough to think of it.” Celia is clever, however, a born magician, and eventually a big hit at the Circus of Dreams, which operates, naturally, only at night and has a slightly sinister air about it. But what would you expect of a yarn one of whose chief setting-things-into-action characters is known as “the man in the grey suit”? Morgenstern treads into Harry Potter territory, but though the chief audience for both Rowling and this tale will probably comprise of teenage girls, there are only superficial genre similarities. True, Celia’s magical powers grow, and the ordinary presto-change-o stuff gains potency—and, happily, surrealistic value. Finally, though, all the magic has deadly consequence, and it is then that the tale begins to take on the contours of a dark thriller, all told in a confident voice that is often quite poetic, as when the man in the grey suit tells us, “There’s magic in that. It’s in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict.”
Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-385-53463-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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