A slightly awkward but diverting thriller, rich in historical detail, with a peculiar flavor all its own.
A good old-fashioned gothic suspense story, heaving bosom included.
This posthumous tale from Walton (1907-1996), a pioneering female fantasy author who published her first novel in 1936, finds honeymooning American couple Richard and Barbara Keyes embarking on an ill-fated stay at a remote Italian villa, an imposing structure that conceals both ancient, eerie Etruscan tombs and a family history of madness and murder. Left to fend for herself after her husband is rendered unconscious in an auto accident, Barbara—isolated in a desolate mountain pass without access to a telephone—stumbles upon the gory remains of the villa’s caretaker and finds herself menaced by a mysterious young villager whose connection to the house and its history provides the story’s lurid throughline. The book teems with gothic detail: a mad old prince bent on vendetta, intimations of ancient civilizations, skeletons chained in subterranean tombs, leering sexual threat, lowering shadows and an overwhelmed young heroine besieged by forces she can barely comprehend. It’s mostly good fun; Barbara, while a bit hysterical, is a plucky protagonist, and Walton (The Sword is Forged, 1983, etc.) lards her potboiler with intriguing historical detail—there is much talk of the mysterious, ancient Etruscans and their peculiar notion of justice. But too often, the narrative bogs down in clunky exposition (the prince is an incorrigible monologist) and thin characterization. Still, there is considerable charm in this old-fashioned hair-raiser, and Walton’s focus on history and myth is distinctive.
A slightly awkward but diverting thriller, rich in historical detail, with a peculiar flavor all its own.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61696-133-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Tachyon
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.
Self-assured, entertaining debut novel that blends genres and crosses continents in quest of magic.
The world’s not big enough for two wizards, as Tolkien taught us—even if that world is the shiny, modern one of the late 19th century, with its streetcars and electric lights and newfangled horseless carriages. Yet, as first-time novelist Morgenstern imagines it, two wizards there are, if likely possessed of more legerdemain than true conjuring powers, and these two are jealous of their turf. It stands to reason, the laws of the universe working thus, that their children would meet and, rather than continue the feud into a new generation, would instead fall in love. Call it Romeo and Juliet for the Gilded Age, save that Morgenstern has her eye on a different Shakespearean text, The Tempest; says a fellow called Prospero to young magician Celia of the name her mother gave her, “She should have named you Miranda...I suppose she was not clever enough to think of it.” Celia is clever, however, a born magician, and eventually a big hit at the Circus of Dreams, which operates, naturally, only at night and has a slightly sinister air about it. But what would you expect of a yarn one of whose chief setting-things-into-action characters is known as “the man in the grey suit”? Morgenstern treads into Harry Potter territory, but though the chief audience for both Rowling and this tale will probably comprise of teenage girls, there are only superficial genre similarities. True, Celia’s magical powers grow, and the ordinary presto-change-o stuff gains potency—and, happily, surrealistic value. Finally, though, all the magic has deadly consequence, and it is then that the tale begins to take on the contours of a dark thriller, all told in a confident voice that is often quite poetic, as when the man in the grey suit tells us, “There’s magic in that. It’s in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict.”
Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-385-53463-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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