An enthralling epic that balances politics and morality with dramatic battle scenes and complex characters.
In Madeley’s medieval adventure novel, a disgraced duke begins to discover what it takes to rule as he confronts a vengeful king hell-bent on war.
Jarek, the brash duke of House Wancyek raised to one day assume the throne of the kingdom of Wancyrik, essentially throws it all away: After becoming angry that his uncle, King Julian, disciplined one of his riders, Jarek slaps the king and loses an ensuing duel with his cousin, Duke Lenn. His punishment is banishment. Now cut off from royal support, Jarek is allowed to keep his province and ferociously loyal soldiers—but only under the promise that he’ll never return or attack the capital. Meanwhile, in a different land, King Elcimer has managed to form a peaceful coalition with his neighbors. But an assassination attempt by one of his allies, combined with the ruthless manipulation of powerful King Jonnecht of Kensrik, spurs Elcimer to unleash war on the land. Jarek, wallowing in his solitary misery, receives a much-needed wakeup call during a discussion with Galyna, a villager who explains to him the hardships that Jarek’s people have endured under his leadership. With Elcimer’s war making life for his people even more difficult, Jarek faces a choice: Admit defeat, or step up and be the leader he was born to be. Natural dialogue and striking action scenes combine to paint a vivid portrait of a land in chaos. Madeley constructs a world full of danger with both style and wit: “Elcimer is a young man with the loftiest ambitions. Having not faced a moment of substantial adversity or terror in his life, nothing limits the heights which he imagines he could achieve.” There isn’t any real question as to whether or not Jarek will choose to help his kingdom’s people, so the true tension lies in Elcimer’s strategic decisions and in his confrontation with Jarek. That tension, along with the enjoyably flawed characters whom readers meet along the way, ably carries the novel forward to a satisfactory conclusion.
An enthralling epic that balances politics and morality with dramatic battle scenes and complex characters.Pub Date: Dec. 14, 2022
ISBN: 9798369751800
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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