Flawed, then, but impressive and often brilliant.
A serious 16th-century alternate-world history set on a flat Earth where alchemy works, from the author of the award-winning Terminal Mind (2008).
King Edward VI of England, Henry VIII’s young, sickly son, continues his father’s Protestant reforms. The king’s physic, Stephen Parris, dissects corpses (in secret, lest he be accused of witchcraft) in an effort to learn how the body works. Alchemist Christopher Sinclair, who seeks the Philosopher’s Stone, or quintessence (the three essential alchemical elements are salt, sulfur and mercury—so what’s the fourth?), believing such a substance would grant him the ability to raise the dead. Sinclair learns of Parris’ activities and blackmails him into sponsoring a voyage to the edge of the world, where the ocean plunges off into the abyss—and where he believes he will find quintessence. Adding to the pressure on Parris, the king is dying and will be succeeded by Mary Tudor, a fierce Catholic (known to history as Bloody Mary) determined to restore the primacy of Rome. As a Protestant and diabolist, Parris would not survive Mary’s reign, so he agrees to flee with Sinclair, taking along his intelligent and adaptable daughter Catherine against the wishes of his Catholic wife, Joan. Eventually, they reach an island on the brink and find that quintessence abounds: Its powers are all that Sinclair dreamed of and more. But then a Spanish galleon sails into the harbor, guided by Joan in search of Catherine; Mary is now Queen of England, and aboard the galleon is Diego de Tavera, envoy to King Philip of Spain—and a sadistic, ruthless Inquisitor. Against this intricate backdrop, the characters experiment, explore, debate ethics, philosophy and religion, and try to coexist with intelligent nonhumans. The big drawback, however, is Walton’s willingness to ascribe all the messy and inconvenient but unavoidable details of the world’s structure to the will of God, a pretext that should rightly be regarded as a cop-out. Still, the action builds to a thrilling and memorable finale.
Flawed, then, but impressive and often brilliant.Pub Date: March 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3090-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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