A novel follows a new student at the Black River Academy of Swordcraft and Spellcraft.
Durren Flintrand, a young ranger (a fantasy analog to a forest scout in James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales), is introduced to a diverse group of other beginning students. There is the aptly named Tia Locke, a rogue (a fantasy genre professional thief), the oafish Hule Tremick, a fighter (an equivalent to a mercenary soldier), and Areinelimus Ironheart Thundertree, a tremulous female dwarf (in the Tolkien sense) wizard. Together, the four of them form “Party eighteen,” a sort of trainee adventure squad for fighting monsters, exploring mysterious places, and protecting the weak and helpless. Accompanied by Pootle, a disembodied eyeball assigned to be their observer, they are thrown into perilous operations by the teachers at the academy. With a mismatched set of personalities and diverse skill sets, the members of Party eighteen find themselves frequently at odds and in one another’s way. They must learn to work together and get along, overcoming their weaknesses and growing in confidence, skill, and ability to cooperate. Because of their youth and inexperience, they begin their “studies” with relatively small hazards—their first task is to recover merchant goods stolen by rat-people bandits. Nothing is perfectly safe, not even unicorns in the forest. But the young students’ learning curve is matched by ever-increasing risks, and soon they find their basic training is in the shadow of greater evils than the academy had ever warned them about. Tallerman (Passive Resistance, 2016, etc.) and debut author Wills freely borrow from the pop culture of “Dungeons & Dragons,” “World of Warcraft,” and similar fantasy adventure games, down to the “Level One” in the book’s title. In this way, the text partakes of both the strengths and weaknesses of “gaming fiction” (a notoriously lightweight subgenre of fantasy) as well as the obvious parallels to J.K. Rowling’s famous wizarding school. Familiarity takes some of the wonder away from the fantastic, but the authors compensate with superb pacing, competent writing, well-described action, fun situations, and appealing characters. The first in a series, the book remains a pleasant confection.
Well-crafted fantasy fiction about a team of young trainees tackling dangerous missions.Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-927598-51-1
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Digital Fantasy Fiction
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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