Readers hungry for more dragons, elves, mages and gnomes will find exactly what they're looking for.
The third installment in Moon's Paladin's Legacy series (Kings of the North, 2011, etc.) is a solid if unremarkable fantasy tale, with some rousing action and intriguing plot twists.
The current series follows up on the author’s Deed of Paksenarrion trilogy from two decades ago, and readers who aren't familiar with Moon's world will want to start at the beginning. But those who are already invested will find plenty to appreciate, even as the plot moves forward only incrementally. Nominal main character Kieri Phelan, who's found himself the king of Lyonya, a land shared uneasily between humans and elves, faces an invasion and a potential traitor from within. Elsewhere other characters encounter a powerful and aloof dragon; villains who can project their minds into others; and mages who heal by mixing humans with plants, like a sort of Tolkien take on the Swamp Thing. The range of characters can be dizzying even for series veterans, and many seemingly important players go missing for a hundred pages or more at a time. Although the book starts with a chaotic battle and ends with a shocking assassination, it feels at times like Moon is just spinning the wheels, resolving very little by the time the novel comes to a close. In between, though, she parcels out plenty of fascinating military detail (as readers of her many military sci-fi novels might expect) and gives a sense of the well-planned depth of the world she's created. At times a little formal and stilted, Moon's prose is very much in the established Tolkien epic fantasy tradition, and while it can seem staid, it's also comfortingly familiar. She's an old hand at the genre, and she knows how to deliver its most potent elements.
Readers hungry for more dragons, elves, mages and gnomes will find exactly what they're looking for.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-345-50876-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
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
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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