Quite amusing longiloquence, largiloquence, grandiloquence, multiloquence, polylogy, and rodomontade, with flatulence as...
Fantasy sequel to Flint’s episodic and tongue-in-cheek solo novel The Philosophical Strangler (2001), which featured the giant professional strangler (and quandary-crazed amateur philosopher) Greyboar, his disgruntled sidekick agent/manager Ignace, the cult of Joe (the caveman who invented Old Geister—or God—and so had Joe’s Big Mountains, Joe’s Mountains, Joe’s Hills, Joe’s Favorite Woods, and Joe’s Sea named after him), and Greyboar’s Kantian qualms about the meaning of it all as a strangler and his moral aversion to strangling a girl (he doesn’t do women). We now return to Grotum and New Sfinctr and suffer the delayed entrance of “the man by whom professional thuggee should be judged” for the return of the disgustingly handsome, despicably skilled, appallingly talented artist Benvenuti Sfondrati-Piccolomini, Notorious Scapegrace, in turbulencies taken from his famous autobiography, as he arrives at the sluggish, oily waters of Goimr harbor (which give rise to the expression “grubby as Goimr”). But should a promising young artist linger in such a place? His frenzied flashing sword soon saves the giantess Gwendolyn, Greyboar’s sister, by slaying a great mob of ruffians, largely by back-stabbing (the code of the Sfondrati-Piccolomini). But when he comes up against the wizard Zulkeh and his doltish dwarf Shelyid, Benvenuti must struggle through a profound maloneirophrenia.
Quite amusing longiloquence, largiloquence, grandiloquence, multiloquence, polylogy, and rodomontade, with flatulence as infamous and peccant as verbosity. Really.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7434-3524-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Baen
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2002
A thoughtful and passionate depiction of one woman’s struggle to discover her truest self.
A young politician confronts affairs of state, the dark secrets of the past, considerable emotional turmoil, and the weather in this follow-up to the World Fantasy Award–winning Witchmark (2018).
The country of Aeland reels after the events of the previous volume, in which Dame Grace Hensley’s brother Miles discovered that the aether network (a magical equivalent of electricity) was being powered by the souls of the dead, the brutal war with neighboring Laneer was trumped up to grab Laneeri souls for the network, the Laneeri retaliated by possessing the returning Aelander soldiers and forcing them to murder innocents, and their father was complicit in most of it. The people are angry about the loss of aether, and they would be angrier still if they knew that many of the nobles were secret witches who thrust common witches into asylums to exploit their powers. As the country’s new Chancellor, Grace is supposed to calm the people, maintain the status quo, and mollify the Amaranthines, the faerylike psychopomps who condemn the aether network’s abuse of souls. As the Voice of the Invisibles, Grace must lead a cabal of unwilling mages to quell the worst storms that Aeland has seen in centuries. But she has no support from her scheming peers, and her imprisoned father, the former Chancellor and Voice, is clearly manipulating events behind the scenes. Grace would like to free the witches and finally be honest with Aeland’s people, but she fears it will cause mass riot. However, others are forcing her hand, including Miles’ friend Robin, a medical student and secret witch, and Avia Jessup, an astute and dangerously attractive former heiress–turned-reporter who’s nearing many explosive truths. Grace is an intriguing contrast with her brother Miles, protagonist of Witchmark, who has a much more black-and-white sense of morality. Grace was the designated heir to her father’s several types of power; and while she now despises him, freeing herself of his influence and ruthless love isn’t easy for her. She has good intentions toward the people of Aeland, but she has no idea about how the other half lives. She takes her comforts for granted even as she neglects her own desires in the service of others, exemplified by the narrative’s emphasis on the many meals she misses in the course of her duties.
A thoughtful and passionate depiction of one woman’s struggle to discover her truest self.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7653-9899-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Just the thing for those who want their New Age nostrums wrapped in medieval kit.
If you don’t have a woeful countenance already, this knight’s tale will slap one on you right quick.
It’s 1483, and down in Cornwall, a knight is writing a farewell to his children against the possibility that he may fall in battle in a war against the Thane of Cawdor. Not the one whose title King Macbeth usurped 400 years earlier, it would seem—though, given the anachronistic nature of this book, anything’s possible. Take, for instance, a moment just a few pages in, when our seasoned and grown-up knight, settling into his yarn, recalls that the knight to whom he apprenticed as a young man began his tutelage with a nice cuppa. That’s all very well and good, except that tea was unknown in the Middle Ages; a stickler will tell you that it first turns up a century and a half after the events actor/novelist Hawke (Ash Wednesday, 2002, etc.) recounts. That’s either magical realism or sloppiness, both of which this latest effort abounds in. Take the nostrum that Good Sir Knight Senior imparts to Junior: “You are better than no one, and no one is better than you.” All very nicely egalitarian, that, but a bit out of step with the elaborate hierarchy of medieval equerry and nobility. And more: “The simple joys are the great ones. Pleasure is not complicated.” Tell it to Abelard and Heloise, oh Obi-Wan. Elsewhere Hawke merrily (and again anachronistically) stuffs in a well-known Buddhist tale, the punch line to which is, “I set that boy down hours ago, but I see you are still carrying him.” Ah, well. By all appearances, Hawke aspires to write a modern Siddhartha, but what we wind up with is more along the lines of watered-down Mitch Albom—and that’s a very weak cup of tea indeed.
Just the thing for those who want their New Age nostrums wrapped in medieval kit.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-307-96233-1
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
SEEN & HEARD
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