While treading familiar terrain, this tale about a league of warriors remains unquestionably appealing, rousing, and worthy...
Dwarves band together with humans and elves to stop an evil sorcerer involved in massacring kingdoms and stealing souls in this fantasy.
Bran, like most dwarves, doesn’t think highly of humans. Seeing many in the human town, Kopa, Bran and her Uncle Daga consider them weak. Children, for one, don’t reach maturity until age 20, whereas Bran, a mere 7, is on the cusp of adulthood. So it’s a surprise when Bran, while learning to forge horseshoes, bonds with the human farrier’s 14-year-old son, Vilmar. Their friendship grows as Vilmar teaches Bran to ride horses, but destiny soon pulls them apart. With war on the horizon, Bran joins the Yazu, a secret society of warriors trained to protect dwarves. Vilmar, gifted with magic from a unicorn he once helped, has the capacity to become a powerful green wizard who can access the five elements for attack or defense. Meanwhile, enchanter Savas-Zev, sporting an inexplicable contempt for dwarves, is killing all races and infecting dwarves in particular with a fatal pox. Bran, Vilmar, and others lose loved ones at the hands of the murderous Savas-Zev, but it gets worse: the wizard locks restless souls in hundreds of crystal balls called soul cages. A potentially lethal confrontation between the Yazu and Savas-Zev seems inevitable. Recognizable mystical creatures populate the novel, from elves, including Yazu ally Iyorath, to villainous orcs, goblins, and trolls. McLaughlin (Whispers of Life, 2014, etc.) adds refreshing touches, like the Dahla horse Daga gives his niece—a small wooden steed that can manifest into whatever real one Bran imagines. Descriptive passages augment the story, especially Vilmar training with the elements, buried in the earth or enveloped by fire. Plus there’s a character whose eventual appearance is not just unsettling but likewise sets the stage for a sequel. The narrative only falters with notable inconsistencies, primarily surrounding the Yazu. For example, although the Yazu’s a group of “dwarf women warriors,” it’s clear that there are both male, like Captain Garn-Ithel, and non-dwarf members. Similarly, an implication that men will die by simply uttering “Yazu” proves untrue when numerous males repeatedly say it.
While treading familiar terrain, this tale about a league of warriors remains unquestionably appealing, rousing, and worthy of a sequel.Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-942430-47-6
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Year of the Book Press
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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