Rich with world history and a burning central question, the story provides an array of real-life characters and fascinating...
From author Crutchley (Innovation Trends in Plastics Decoration and Surface Treatment, 2014) comes a novel concerning missing gold and the tumultuous world events in the time of Napoleon.
In the late 1700s, the colony of Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti) is in a state of upheaval. With the Revolution and resulting terrors sweeping France, places such as Le Cap (“the Paris of the Caribbean”) are starting to see violence. Having come to Saint-Domingue “to find fortune in a colony as far away as possible from the chaos in our motherland,” the narrator finds instead a hotbed of activity. After joining the army in Saint-Domingue, he sees his share of riots and revolts. It’s during one such operation to quell the chaos, when the army’s “sheer numbers totally surprised and shocked the…looters,” that the narrator finds his wife has been murdered and his son gone missing. In addition, a large amount of gold “sent to finance the restoration” is believed to have disappeared. So begins an investigation known as Black Carriage. What happened to the gold, and could it be related to the death of his wife? It’s an investigation that takes the reader to places as far-flung as Switzerland and Brazil. Part historical fiction, part investigative mystery, the book incorporates an enticing swath of the former. Readers familiar with the era will recognize Prince Pedro, Gen. Brune, Toussaint Louverture, and, of course, Napoleon; those unacquainted with such names will learn a great deal. Readers interested in the mystery will have to wade through dense periods of military maneuvering (such as with the French campaign through Europe) in order to find answers, but the journey is kept lively with well-written scenes of firing cannons and swinging swords (“I swung my sabre at a rebel crewman who jumped overboard to avoid me, and in the same sweep cut down one of his colleagues to my left just as he was raising his spike”).
Rich with world history and a burning central question, the story provides an array of real-life characters and fascinating locations.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 652
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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