An affirmational novel that maps out a mystical but insubstantial trek.
Clovis hastens readers along the path to enlightenment in this short spiritual work.
In this book’s framing device, the reader is lost in a dark forest. Luckily, they have a guide, a companion, someone to point out life’s brilliant mysteries and remind the reader to breathe. “OUR story is the journey of the state of grace,” writes this comrade and narrator, who always renders pronouns in all-caps. “OUR path unfolds with the light already within US. OUR inner flashlight is guiding US. Gratitude is the flashlight within. All that matters in the next step into the darkness of the forest.” As the reader moves through the forest with their guide, they’re treated to affirmations regarding their place in the universe, symbolic lessons tied to butterflies and waterfalls, and cosmic considerations related to the vastness of space and time. While it’s easy to lose one’s path in the dark forest, says the narrator, the reader shouldn’t worry too much, as there is a Creator whose light burns within them. But, the narrator asks, what will happen when the forest falls away and one finds oneself back in the real world? Clovis writes with urgency and lyricism, with her prose, at its best, evoking a kind of Old Testament–style poetry: “For the Earth is an old piece of clay with thousands of thumbprints. And white brushstrokes paint the dusk of evening sky as God is indeed the magnificent painter and sculptor of the universe leaving a portrait of three billion stars and a supermassive black hole.” Although the book bills itself as a “Meditative Novel,” it is not a novel in any traditional sense. For example, each chapter is only a paragraph long, and fully half the pages are blank; there’s no plot or differentiated characters, and the setting is an allegorical forest with few distinguishing details other than darkness. With little to hold onto other than Clovis’ repetitive affirmations, readers will likely fight the urge not to slip away into the trees—as, unfortunately, there’s little to be gained by following the path to the end.
An affirmational novel that maps out a mystical but insubstantial trek.Pub Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 9798765241028
Page Count: 116
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.
A dark fantasy set on the Yale campus ends with a bang.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern of Lethe House, one of Yale’s storied secret societies, has been to hell and back. That was in Hell Bent (2023), the middle book in Bardugo’s Ninth House trilogy, where the secret societies wield not just temporal power but magic as well. Hell Bent ended with Alex and her friends rescuing her crush, mentor, and fellow Lethe officer, Daniel “Darlington” Arlington V, from eternal torment. One small wrinkle: The demon Golgarot used Alex’s blood to wedge a door open between Hell and New Haven, and his minions are slipping through. Also, one of the group has turned into a vampire, and Darlington is now half demon. “He’d given up some part of himself to preserve the rest of his human soul. He’d become both prisoner and warden.” As the final book opens, the exhausted crew are hunting yet another monster. They can’t keep this up forever; they will have to find a way to close the portal. Alex has the energetic, driven melancholy of the hard-boiled, dark fantasy heroine she is. She believes “magic is real, but safe is make-believe,” as her roommate puts it. An open hellmouth, a supportive scholar, a vampire whose story arcs precariously toward redemption, a gentleman fiend who gets literally horny when aroused, a California girl with rare supernatural powers who cracks wise as she fights fiends—the series has a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spawn, but Bardugo’s way with words and her keen social observation keep the book from feeling derivative. A demon’s classic New England house is decorated with “ruthlessly inoffensive watercolor seascapes”; Lethe’s board president “wore the new uniform of Wall Street: a dress shirt, khakis, and a fleece with a Yale Y embroidered over the heart, as if he were on his way to a hostile takeover followed by some light rock climbing.” Will Alex and her friends get the door shut without losing Darlington? Bardugo injects her protagonist with such a convincing mix of cynicism and hope that failure seems like a distinct possibility.
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781250884312
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.
The World Trade Center attacks are at the center of an intricate, twisty family drama spanning decades in both directions.
“You could brace for your sister to die of a terminal illness, only to have your healthy sibling killed in a random car wreck. You could carry a baby safely to term and then, on a bright blue day in September, walk into a building that collapsed beneath your feet.” Or you could be a character in a Jodi Picoult novel and face all of the above and much, much more. Fans of My Sister’s Keeper (2004) will notice a reference to that novel in the preceding quote and be glad to hear a character from that book is back. During the Covid-19 pandemic, former teenage delinquent Jesse Fitzgerald, now a detective on the Providence, Rhode Island, police force, meets Molly Ambrose, a 19-year-old prodigy who runs the state’s emergency preparedness and response program. “Despite the fact that there were fifteen years between us and we both had enough baggage to fill a cargo hold,” as Molly puts it, the two fall madly in love. The baggage she’s referring to includes, on her side, a mother who died on 9/11 when Molly was less than three months old. Picoult supplies her signature delightful banter and gift for depicting passion and romance to win the reader’s sympathy for this possibly questionable match between dedicated public servants, whose favorite game at bedtime is “Who can think of the most terrifying worst-case scenario?” Very little more can be revealed without spoilers, but trigger warnings for this book would be a long list indeed, ranging from suicide and filicide to rape and mental illness (welcome to Picoultland!). Subplots visit evangelical and Navajo cultures as well as the ins and outs of polygraphy. Make sure to read the afterword in which Picoult explains her real-life sources of inspiration.
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9780593726259
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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