An uneven fantasy tale with an encouraging message about embracing life’s risks.
Corna (You’ll Fall Asleep, 2014, etc.) offers a fantastical novel about a fearful girl and the strange events that help her find herself.
Helen is a troubled, nervous girl. She finds it hard to make friends and suffers from extreme anxiety about questions of life and death. One day, her brother Alex, a pilot, asks her to help him celebrate his 1,000th flight by flying with him to any destination she chooses. She selects a lake that she’s been to before that’s tucked away in a far-off mountain range and difficult to reach, even by plane. During the flight, Helen has a strange experience: She looks out over the lake and sees a young girl on its shore whom she intensely identifies with, and suddenly, she feels transported to the lake’s shores and can feel the young girl’s emotions. When Helen tries to explain her strange experience to her brother, he doesn’t believe her. After they return from their trip, Helen embarks on her own voyage back to the lake to discover who the little girl was and why she feels so drawn to the area. Along the way, she makes friends with a man named Johnny, who explains the origins of his village and the towns nearby. Later, she meets nearby homeowners Alice and Martin, who take her under their wing and invite her to learn more about the village’s community. Soon, they reveal that Alice is one of the few people in the world who can remember their past lives, and the village is filled with others who have the same talent.At first incredulous, Helen begins a journey that changes every aspect of her life. Corna’s novel centers on an uplifting message about conquering fear, and it reads more like a folk tale than a contemporary novel. However, many aspects of the story may strike readers as hard to believe, and its lack of clarity may make it hard to follow at times (“You can lose yourself in pain as in happiness, but if you want to be yourself, you will have to be able to keep yourself in the middle”).The dialogue can also be awkward and unrealistic; for example, when Alex doubts his sister’s experience, he says, “Although I don’t believe in paranormal phenomena, perhaps we are in the presence of such a situation.”
An uneven fantasy tale with an encouraging message about embracing life’s risks.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1494205812
Page Count: 228
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Curiously compelling but not entirely satisfying.
The fourth and final volume in the Terra Ignota series, a science fantasy set on a 25th-century Earth where people affiliate by philosophy and interest instead of geography.
For the first time in centuries, the world is seized by war—once the combatants actually figure out how to fight one. While rivalries among the Hives provide several motives for conflict, primary among them is whether J.E.D.D. Mason, the heir to various political powers and apparently a god from another universe in human form, should assume absolute rule over the world and transform it for the better. Gathering any large group to further the progress of the war or the possibility for peace is hampered by the loss of the world transit system of flying cars and the global communications network, both shut down by parties unknown, indicating a hidden and dangerous faction manipulating the situation for its own ends. As events play out, they bear a strong resemblance to aspects of the Iliad and the Odyssey, suggesting the persistent influence of Bridger, a deceased child who was also probably a god. Is tragedy inevitable, or can the characters defy their apparent fates? This often intriguing but decidedly peculiar chimera of a story seems to have been a philosophical experiment, but it’s difficult to determine just what was being tested. The worldbuilding—part science, part magic—doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny, and the political structure defies comprehension. The global government consists of an oligarchy of people deeply and intimately connected by love and hate on a scale which surpasses the royal dynasties of old, and it includes convicted felons among their number. Perhaps the characters are intended as an outsized satiric comment on the way politicians embrace expediency over morality or personal feelings, but these supposedly morally advanced potentates commit so many perverse atrocities against one another it is difficult to engage with them as people. At times, they seem nearly as alien as J.E.D.D. Mason.
Curiously compelling but not entirely satisfying.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7806-4
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
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
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