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
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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