Hardcore fantasy fans will find this an absorbing, fast-paced table-setter.
The swords-and-sorcery genre deepens its presence on the African continent with this rough, tough page-turner replete with demons, dragons, and really bad dreams.
To the grand parade of brooding swashbucklers and formidable warriors striding along the thoroughfares of epic fantasy, one can now add the name of Tau Solarin. As this saga opens, Tau is a novice swordsman who hails from a rural village called Fief Kerem in a coastal corner of a mythic ancient Africa where the Omehi, or Chosen, people live in ongoing, centurieslong conflict against the Hedeni. Among the Omehi, caste divisions are strictly defined and often brutally enforced. And young Tau, who refers to himself as “High Common,” is still considered a “Lesser” even by friends who are placed in the higher “Noble” stratum. Even after Nobles and Lessers band together to fight Hedeni marauders and dragons, they battle among themselves for status and honor. And when Tau’s father steps in to fight in his son’s place and is killed under a Noble’s command, Tau vows revenge on all who abetted the murder. Exiled from Kerem, Tau finds his way into a military academy, where his physical prowess and intense diligence soon separate him from other recruits. In the midst of his training, Tau reconnects with his childhood love, Zuri, now among the so-called “Gifted” caste of mystic warriors who help Omehi soldiers fight the Hedeni. What Tau learns from her about magic enhances his considerable virtuosity in combat. The further Tau gets into his warrior identity, the more chaotic and complicated the world around him becomes. Gradually his burning desire for vengeance is all but overpowered by a nascent yearning to bring lasting peace to his battle-scarred land. Winter’s debut novel, already a self-published cult sensation among fantasy fans, is rife with vividly orchestrated battle sequences, whether the fights are between two people or vast armies. And the action is unrelenting, at times even overpowering. Sometimes you wish Tau and his comrades would take longer breaks between both mock and real battles. The relative novelty of this saga's African setting will draw comparisons with Marlon James’ Black Leopard, Red Wolf, though Winter’s novel is less stylistically ambitious and more formulaic.
Hardcore fantasy fans will find this an absorbing, fast-paced table-setter.Pub Date: July 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-48976-8
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
For die-hard mermaid-fiction lovers only.
When a young librarian comes into possession of the diary of a traveling circus from more than 200 years ago, he decides the book may hold clues to a family mystery he needs to solve to save his sister’s life.
Narrator Simon and his younger sister, Enola, grew up in an 18th-century house on a bluff overlooking Long Island Sound. Taking after her mother, a former circus performer who drowned herself when Simon was 7, Enola travels with a carnival as a tarot card reader. Simon is still living in their dangerously dilapidated family home when, out of the blue on one June day, he receives a book from an antiquarian bookseller, who had noticed Simon's grandmother's name inside. Soon Simon discovers a frightening pattern among his female ancestors, all unnaturally good swimmers, all drowning as young women on July 24. If this “coincidence” sounds a bit far-fetched, it sets the bar for the novel’s credibility. Swyler intercuts Simon’s present drama—intensifying research into the diary’s history, loss of his job at the local library, incipient but already rocky love affair with fellow librarian Alice, return home of Enola, irretrievable collapse of the family manse—with the romantic tragedy of Amos, a traveling circus performer, and Evangeline, an aquatic performer with a guilty secret. Born in the 1780s and abandoned by his parents, Amos is mute when he joins a traveling troupe to perform a disappearing act as a “Wild Boy.” The fortuneteller takes him under her wing, teaching him to read the future. But despite her warnings, he falls for the dangerously mysterious Evangeline. She has his baby girl, and the havoc that follows leads straight to the curse that Simon, a whiny loser, is frantic to solve before someone else dies. A bit fey, even as romantic whimsy.
For die-hard mermaid-fiction lovers only.Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05480-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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