An opera of the four elements, moody and melodious.
Sequel to Haydon’s Rhapsody Trilogy fantasy/romance, begun impressively with Rhapsody: Child of Blood (1999). In Serendair, the ex-whore and harpist Rhapsody, who has Namer magic, gets revirginated, falls in with the assassin Achmed the Snake and his jolly giant sidekick and Sergeant-Major, Grunthor. She gains a fiery sword to help her fight the F’dor, who intend to wake the Primal Wyrm from the world core and level all with fire. In Prophecy: Child of Earth (2000), they recklessly rescue the endangered Sleeping Child from the F’dor while Rhapsody at last unites with her beloved Ashe. The Island of Serendair has been lost beneath the sea for over a thousand years as new plots interweave Lirin’s Lady Cymrian (Rhapsody) and Ashe Lord Cymrian with Esten, dark Mistress of the Ravens Guild of foundry artisans, and with Achmed, whose Bolgs now rebuild Castle Canrif of Ylorc, and with Grunthor. The half-human Queen Rhapsody and her Lord Cymrian care for the Navarre orphans—Gwydion, who assumes his late father’s title, and Gwydion’s young sister Melisande. Lirin and Ylorc are loosely allied with relentlessly sunbaked Sorbold, ruled by greedy, aged Dowager Empress Leitha, famed as the Gray Assassin and mother of her poisonous Crown Prince Vyshla, though her end nears. The fate of the world depends on the Sleeping Child now in a vault under Ylorc, for her altar imprisons beneath it the F’dor children of fire set on rising to destroy the Earth. Rhapsody herself begs Ashe to impregnate her, though he fears a child will kill Rhapsody, yet when she finally is pregnant she must keep it a secret from the risen demons. The worst happens when her old enemy Michael returns from the dead, casting no shadow but burning villages and sending her to be raped by his ship’s crew.
An opera of the four elements, moody and melodious.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-87884-2
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.
A novelist tries to adapt to her ever changing reality as her world slowly disappears.
Renowned Japanese author Ogawa (Revenge, 2013, etc.) opens her latest novel with what at first sounds like a sinister fairy tale told by a nameless mother to a nameless daughter: “Long ago, before you were born, there were many more things here…transparent things, fragrant things…fluttery ones, bright ones….It’s a shame that the people who live here haven’t been able to hold such marvelous things in their hearts and minds, but that’s just the way it is on this island.” But rather than a twisted bedtime story, this depiction captures the realities of life on the narrator's unnamed island. The small population awakens some mornings with all knowledge of objects as mundane as stamps, valuable as emeralds, omnipresent as birds, or delightful as roses missing from their minds. They then proceed to discard all physical traces of the idea that has disappeared—often burning the lifeless ones and releasing the natural ones to the elements. The authoritarian Memory Police oversee this process of loss and elimination. Viewing “anything that fails to vanish when they say it should [as] inconceivable,” they drop into homes for inspections, seizing objects and rounding up anyone who refuses—or is simply unable—to follow the rules. Although, at the outset, the plot feels quite Orwellian, Ogawa employs a quiet, poetic prose to capture the diverse (and often unexpected) emotions of the people left behind rather than of those tormented and imprisoned by brutal authorities. Small acts of rebellion—as modest as a birthday party—do not come out of a commitment to a greater cause but instead originate from her characters’ kinship with one another. Technical details about the disappearances remain intentionally vague. The author instead stays close to her protagonist’s emotions and the disorientation she and her neighbors struggle with each day. Passages from the narrator’s developing novel also offer fascinating glimpses into the way the changing world affects her unconscious mind.
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-87060-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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