Nicholas weaves the magic of wizards and sorceresses—buidseach and cailleach phiseogach—so naturally into the medieval...
Nicholas’ sequel to his historical saga, Something Red (2012), continues the haunting tale of exiled Irish queen Maeve and her cohorts in medieval north England.
Maeve’s troop rests at the castle of the Sieur de Blanchefontaine, Sir Jehan, the place where she defeated an evil presence, one appearing as a fox "the size of a small horse." Maeve is with her granddaughter, Nemain; former crusader Jack Brown; and the orphan Hob, now Squire Robert under Sir Jehan’s patronage. Word of trouble comes from lands of the Sieur de Chantemerle, Sir Odinell. A Northumbria newcomer, Sir Tarquin, is "secretive," "barely civil," and soon after his arrival, "affairs began to go awry." Knights are spellbound. Peasants disappear and are found as corpses, "horribly wizened…skin…brown and harsh as bark…interior collapse along fault lines deep in the flesh." Sir Jehan persuades Maeve to help Sir Odinell. After the journey to castle Chantemerle, Maeve glimpses evil emanating from Sir Tarquin and realizes "there’s a fell being that haunts this coast: something dire, something vast." Nicholas is a marvelously descriptive writer, littering the narrative with images of table fare at inns ("cruppy-dows, cakes made of oatmeal and fish”), medieval dialects ("a few miles tae t’sooth, sithee”) and battledress ("mail hauberks and coifs, armored gloves, greaves, and helms”). Major character development comes as Hob matures into the future-queen Nemain’s worthy betrothed and warrior-protector, and the dark, violent tale moves rapidly as Maeve’s troop journeys through desperate adventures and into Northumbria, meeting charcoal makers, slaying bandits and staying a "sennight" at Abelard Inn awaiting the summons of Sir Odinell to confront Sir Tarquin. And much like a more profound Harry Potter for adults, Nicholas’ fantasy-laced knights-of-old saga ends with opportunity for more to come.
Nicholas weaves the magic of wizards and sorceresses—buidseach and cailleach phiseogach—so naturally into the medieval milieu that Maeve’s tale reads as entertaining historical fiction rather than a fey supernatural tale.Pub Date: March 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6024-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Once again, a highly impressive must-read.
Second part of an alien-contact trilogy (The Three-Body Problem, 2014) from China’s most celebrated science-fiction author.
In the previous book, the inhabitants of Trisolaris, a planet with three suns, discovered that their planet was doomed and that Earth offered a suitable refuge. So, determined to capture Earth and exterminate humanity, the Trisolarans embarked on a 400-year-long interstellar voyage and also sent sophons (enormously sophisticated computers constructed inside the curled-up dimensions of fundamental particles) to spy on humanity and impose an unbreakable block on scientific advance. On Earth, the Earth-Trisolaris Organization formed to help the invaders, despite knowing the inevitable outcome. Humanity’s lone advantage is that Trisolarans are incapable of lying or dissimulation and so cannot understand deceit or subterfuge. This time, with the Trisolarans a few years into their voyage, physicist Ye Wenjie (whose reminiscences drove much of the action in the last book) visits astronomer-turned-sociologist Luo Ji, urging him to develop her ideas on cosmic sociology. The Planetary Defense Council, meanwhile, in order to combat the powerful escapist movement (they want to build starships and flee so that at least some humans will survive), announces the Wallfacer Project. Four selected individuals will be accorded the power to command any resource in order to develop plans to defend Earth, while the details will remain hidden in the thoughts of each Wallfacer, where even the sophons can't reach. To combat this, the ETO creates Wallbreakers, dedicated to deducing and thwarting the plans of the Wallfacers. The chosen Wallfacers are soldier Frederick Tyler, diplomat Manuel Rey Diaz, neuroscientist Bill Hines, and—Luo Ji. Luo has no idea why he was chosen, but, nonetheless, the Trisolarans seem determined to kill him. The plot’s development centers on Liu’s dark and rather gloomy but highly persuasive philosophy, with dazzling ideas and an unsettling, nonlinear, almost nonnarrative structure that demands patience but offers huge rewards.
Once again, a highly impressive must-read.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7708-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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