A bold beginning to a series that explores gender, empathy, and the frozen north.
Clark’s (The Midnight Land: Part Two: The Gift, 2015) fantasy novel, the first in a series, takes place in an alternate-history version of Russia where women rule and wood spirits lurk among the fir trees.
Krasnoslava “Slava” Tsarinovna is the younger half sister of the Tsarina, Empress of all Zem’. The throne has descended, through their mother’s line, from the very first Empress, Miroslava Praskovyevna, who seized power with “fire and steel. And blood, lots of blood and suffering.” Slava, unlike the capital’s ruthless, scheming princesses, is disgusted by her heritage, feeling “nothing but pleasure in being so totally unlike someone she would have liked to deny all connection to.” She’s gifted—or cursed—with the supernatural ability to feel the emotions of others when they’re nearby, and she can’t help but be overwhelmed by the ugliness she senses in almost everyone she encounters. To Slava, “people are wolves hiding in rotting lambskins,” and she longs to escape them. When a northern princess, Olga Vasilisovna, comes to the Tsarina proposing an expedition to the far north, beyond the edges of maps, Slava begs to go with her. The journey challenges and changes Slava, and she gains physical strength even as her psychic powers grow. The mercy she shows others comes back to their traveling party tenfold; for example, an elk she saves leads the expedition back to the road when they go astray. Eventually, the leshiye, forest spirits who take the forms of trees, take notice—but will they prove to be friends or foes? Clark’s narrative wears its Russian literature influences on its sleeve: the parsimonious Princess Primorskaya, for example, seems like she’s right out of a Nikolai Gogol tale. The author weaves together realistic episodes of life on the road (with its uncanny watchers just off the path) and skillfully evokes the epic scale of the taiga and tundra: “The great snowy plain stretched out before her all the way to the horizon, where a pale sun was rising.” But her choice to swap the usual gender roles—the matriarchal society controls the life of every character, be they man or woman, peasant or Tsarina—elevates this book beyond the average fantasy novel.
A bold beginning to a series that explores gender, empathy, and the frozen north.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5188-3949-8
Page Count: 534
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
