A lushly evocative, if sometimes confusing, tale of the aftermath of an empire.
McDaniel’s historical novel tells a tale of political machinations in a brutal contest for succession after the death of Alexander the Great.
In 323 B.C.E., Alexander’s widow, Roxana, and others—including Perdiccas, a general; Eumenes, Alexander’s secretary; and Cassander, the son of a general—gather around him, shortly after his demise, to decide who will carry the body and where. Secretly, however, each schemes to be the next person to wield the power of the empire. Thus, the seeds of the Wars of the Diadochi are planted. Rival factions wield omens and rituals to create narratives that suit their causes, and the author layers rich description and portentous details to recreate the ancient world as he lays out the narrative stakes. Perdiccas spends two years crafting a cart to transport Alexander, a “shrine forged as a declaration of power.” Ptolemy travels to Egypt, preparing “to intercept the cart and claim Alexander for Memphis,” and Roxana poisons Stateira, Alexander’s second wife, clearing the way for her unborn child to rule. Later, Cassander maneuvers for power while Roxana and Eumenes wander, waiting for their moment to strike, and Ptolemy seeks deification by proxy, declaring Alexander’s rebirth through him. Alexander’s mother, Olympias returns to Pella to claim regency for her grandson with the resulting in a bloody purge. Cassander takes advantage of this, burning the histories and ruling in Alexander IV’s name as he hunts Roxana and her son. The complex historical underpinnings of the story are strong, and McDaniel’s terse and vibrant prose paints vivid images: “No architect had signed the plans—because there were none. Only sketches in sand, redrawn each morning with a jackal’s rib.” Fans of George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones (1996) and its sequels may enjoy the political maneuverings. However, atmosphere frequently triumphs over clarity, as when the author transports Plutarch briefly across time to chronicle the events of the story. The narrative also doesn’t always specify who’s taking what action in the myriad storylines. This first book in a series ends with several main characters converging toward one another, leaving a resolution for future books.
A lushly evocative, if sometimes confusing, tale of the aftermath of an empire.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9798993585000
Page Count: 286
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.
A lively and unabashedly sentimental novel examines the impact of feminism on four upper-middle-class white women in a suburb of Washington, D.C., in 1963.
Transplanted Ohioan Margaret Ryan—married to an accountant, raising three young children, and decidedly at loose ends—decides to recruit a few other housewives to form a book club. She’s thinking A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but a new friend, artistic Charlotte Gustafson, suggests Betty Friedan’s brand-new The Feminine Mystique. They’re joined by young Bitsy Cobb, who aspired to be a veterinarian but married one instead, and Vivian Buschetti, a former Army nurse now pregnant with her seventh child. The Bettys, as they christen themselves, decide to meet monthly to read feminist books, and with their encouragement of each other, their lives begin to change: Margaret starts writing a column for a women’s magazine; Viv goes back to work as a nurse; Charlotte and Bitsy face up to problems with demanding and philandering husbands and find new careers of their own. The story takes in real-life figures like the Washington Post’s Katharine Graham and touches on many of the tumultuous political events of 1963. Bostwick treats her characters with generosity and a heavy dose of wish-fulfillment, taking satisfying revenge on the wicked and solving longstanding problems with a few well-placed words, even showing empathy for the more well-meaning of the husbands. As historical fiction, the novel is hampered by its rosy optimism, but its take on the many micro- and macroaggressions experienced by women of the era is sound and eye-opening. Although Friedan might raise an eyebrow at the use her book’s been put to, readers will cheer for Bostwick’s spunky characters.
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781400344741
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Muse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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