An appealing anthropomorphic dog story commenting on and celebrating artistic pursuits.
An Italian greyhound travels to Brooklyn to search for his artist father, then returns to Venice and looks into his family’s creative roots in Merwin’s fantasy tale.
Piccolo Fortunato, born “at the turn of this century,” is from a family of dogs who helped humans build Venice in the fifth century and “developed dexterity far beyond any breed.” His adventure-loving greyhound father, Alfonso, was a sculptor who taught him how “to carve the wood, chisel the stone and with a small blue flame of my torch to cut and weld the steel.” Alfonso went off to the United States two years ago and hasn’t been heard from since. Piccolo tells his mother, Isabella, that he’s undertaking a search for his dad; on the ship to America, he meets famous Brooklyn-based human sculptor Guy Gizárd, who makes Piccolo his intern. Luckily, a human worker eventually reunites Piccolo with Alfonso, who was once a Gizárd intern himself. Father and son return to Venice to discover that Isabella has new pups and a new protector. Alfonso, Piccolo notes, is “almost twelve. But he’s had hard times, and the last two have been like ten”; after the art that he created finally gets shipped back from America, a tragedy occurs. Later, Piccolo has a renewed passion for art and life following supernatural communion with a canine ancestor and 18th-century Venetian artist Giovanni Tiepolo. The copyright page of this book notes this tale is based on the 2014 novella Piccolo, an Intern’s Tale, credited to two authors: Merwin and “Piccolo Fortunato.” Merwin tells this story with a clear sense of whimsy, as canine characters wear porkpie hats, enjoyably lap up wine, listen to and sing Frank Sinatra tunes, and yearn for romance. Along the way, the author also effectively skewers the modern-day art world—particularly its use of interns. Ultimately, however, this book is most effective as a joyful appreciation of Venice and great art, with depictions of the masterworks of Tiepolo and Tintoretto sprinkled among illustrator Arrigoni’s lovely, occasional grayscale images.
An appealing anthropomorphic dog story commenting on and celebrating artistic pursuits.Pub Date: March 30, 2021
ISBN: 9780578884097
Page Count: 227
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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