As they beg our sympathy for their white-knuckled grief, these heroines speak a rhetoric that itself must have been bounced...
As with the bloody Black Blade (1999), Lustbader again abandons his Ninja action tales to return to the fantasy and foam of his earlier Sunset Warrior cycles. Will loyal fans find this moonglow too greatly at odds with his somersaulting thrillers and perhaps not cross over?
Things open with an overstuffed prologue, adrift in orientalia (“It was Lonon, the Fifth Season—that eerie time between High Summer and Autumn when the gimnopedes swarmed; when, on clear nights, all five moons, pale green as a dove’s belly, could be seen in the vast black bowl of night”). Readers lacking photographic memory will tremble at the elaborate background Lustbader sets up even before the story begins, a vast scheme ringing echoes on a half dozen other far-world phantasmagorias galloping toward Tor to be born. So it is that Giyan and Bartta, female twins, are born and, rather than having them killed, their mother ships them off to be raised as Ramahan at the Abbey of Floating White. By age 15, the twins, devoted to phytochemistry and the Goddess Miina, are versed in the religious politics of their day: their people, the Kundalan, now in bondage to the V’ornn, will be released only when Dar Sala-at returns to fulfill the prophecy made in The Five Sacred Books of Miina, finds The Pearl and defeats the V’ornn (a mission mirroring the messianic salvation brought by Paul Atreides in Dune). Who is the Dar Sala-at? None other than Riane, a girl V’ornn (raised as the enemy, for better or worse), whose burgeoning sorcerer’s energy will bring lightning to the sky, presaging the appearance of Miina’s Sacred Five Dragons.
As they beg our sympathy for their white-knuckled grief, these heroines speak a rhetoric that itself must have been bounced off the five moons. Still, this midnight dish will leave many disembodied with rapture.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-87235-6
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
A strong, thoughtful, and fast-paced follow-up that bodes well for future volumes.
In the second installment of a political fantasy thriller series where “bioenergetic jade” provides magical energy, the conflict of two warlord/organized crime clans has global implications.
In the Hong Kong-like city of Janloon, the Mountain and No Peak clans have announced a public truce while each secretly tries to undermine the other for control of the city and their nation of Kekon, the only source of the jade. As jade smugglers both inside and outside the country threaten the clans’ mutual control over the mineral, political tensions rise between the neighboring nations of Espenia and Ygutan over a rebellion in Shotar, which leads both to seek more jade for their armies. Meanwhile, Hilo, the former Horn (chief enforcer) of the No Peak clan, struggles to master the tactics he needs to fill his late brother’s role as Pillar (clan leader). His sister, Shae, the clan’s Weather Man (chief advisor), has that tactical knowledge but lacks the clan’s complete trust; she’s also trying to juggle her clan responsibilities and her personal life, which includes a quiet romance with a nonclan professor. At the same time, their adopted brother, Anden, embarks on a new, jade-free life in Espenia but still manages to find trouble there, and Hilo’s jade-immune wife, Wen, secretly supports the clan through her own work as a spy. If they are to prevail against the ruthless Ayt Mada, Pillar of the Mountain clan, and the various other domestic and foreign threats, terrible sacrifices will be required, made willingly or not. The first installment, Jade City (2017), leaned rather heavily, albeit effectively, on some tropes and plot points from The Godfather, and it’s pleasing to see that the author has chosen a more independent path this time around. If there’s any thematic link between this book and Godfather II, it’s a common understanding that the outside world has a way of crashing into isolated communities and forcing them to adapt, so it’s best to be on the offensive, as well as a rueful acknowledgment that despite that understanding, relationships with those outside the community might not end well.
A strong, thoughtful, and fast-paced follow-up that bodes well for future volumes.Pub Date: July 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-44092-9
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
A love letter to imagination, adventure, the written word, and the power of many kinds of love.
An independent young girl finds a blue door in a field and glimpses another world, nudging her onto a path of discovery, destiny, empowerment, and love.
Set at the turn of the 20th century, Harrow's debut novel centers on January Scaller, who grows up under the watchful eye of the wealthy Cornelius Locke, who employs her father, Julian, to travel the globe in search of odd objects and valuable treasures to pad his collection, housed in a sprawling Vermont mansion. January appears to have a charmed childhood but is stifled by the high-society old boy’s club of Mr. Locke and his friends, who treat her as a curiosity—a mixed-race girl with a precocious streak, forced into elaborate outfits and docile behavior for the annual society gatherings. When she's 17, her father seemingly disappears, and January finds a book that will change her life forever. With her motley crew of allies—Samuel, the grocer’s son; Jane, the Kenyan woman sent by Julian to be January’s companion; and Bad, her faithful dog—January embarks on an adventure that will lead her to discover secrets about Mr. Locke, the world and its hidden doorways, and her own family. Harrow employs the image of the door (“Sometimes I feel there are doors lurking in the creases of every sentence, with periods for knobs and verbs for hinges”) as well as the metaphor (a “geometry of absence”) to great effect. Similes and vivid imagery adorn nearly every page like glittering garlands. While some stereotypes are present, such as the depiction of East African women as pantherlike, the book has a diverse cast of characters and a strong woman lead. This portal fantasy doesn’t shy away from racism, classism, and sexism, which helps it succeed as an interesting story.
A love letter to imagination, adventure, the written word, and the power of many kinds of love.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-42199-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Redhook/Orbit
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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