A sword-and-sorcery yarn replete with magic, steel, mystery and mythos that will please genre addicts and likely earn a...
Rappaport’s (Secrets of the Undercity, 2011) fantasy epic chronicles the misadventures of wizards and warriors in an era of high adventure.
Toth, a dogged necromancer (“the world’s first,” he says), is an innovator who claims to have discovered a new genre of sorcery, but his passion sometimes blinds him to propriety. At a mourning ceremony, for example, he immediately tries to get the dead man’s bones to use in his magic—although, when confronted by the family, he regrets his insensitivity. Within the genre, necromancers, who raise or communicate with the dead, are often caricatures, but in this novel, Rappaport renders his heroes as likable men in unsympathetic occupations. At one point, in a humorous parody of academic rigidity, Toth presents his findings to a surprisingly skeptical Wizard Council; they just won’t buy that it’s genuine necromancy. The intellectual Toth contrasts strongly with Senfra, a gold-grubbing militant. He’s not without a soul, but the nature of his work demands a certain lack of pity—and generates an impressive wake of blood and bodies. Despite his fearsomeness, he’s eventually bested by an Amazon hellbent on revenge, and that defeat drives him out of his home. As Toth investigates his new magic, and those who would use it for evil, Senfra escapes to his island lair. Predictably, they meet and must eventually work together to defeat the evil sorcerer Hisvii in an engaging adventure. Often in fantasy, swordplay gets lost in a sea of clunky explication, but not here: Characters slice, parry, spell and disarm in prose that renders the confrontations not only believable, but visible. The same goes for the characters: Toth is obsessed with the noble pursuit of the truth—it just happens to require dead bodies—and Senfra seems to be working toward a happy retirement from pillaging. It’s a fantastic world, to be sure, but populated by human beings.
A sword-and-sorcery yarn replete with magic, steel, mystery and mythos that will please genre addicts and likely earn a broad readership.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0978939359
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Owl King Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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