The drawback here is that Wyl’s persistent failings—inability to learn from his mistakes, take elementary safety precautions...
Second in McIntosh’s fantasy trilogy from Down Under, hard on the heels of Myrren’s Gift (p. 90).
Gripped by a powerful enchantment known as the Quickening, warrior Wyl Thirsk now occupies his third, female, body, that of Faryl the assassin. Passed to Wyl by the witch Myrren, whose horrid death Wyl was obliged by the merciless, calculating King Celimus of Morgravia to witness, the magic forces Wyl’s mind to occupy the body of the person who kills him. First, mercenary Romen Koreldy killed Wyl in his true body. As Romen, Wyl became the beloved of Queen Valentyna of Briavel. But then Romen was murdered by Faryl, so now Wyl occupies her body and has three sets of skills and memories to draw upon. The insanely ambitious Celimus intends to win Briavel, by marrying Valentyna if he can—or by conquest if he can’t. Poor Valentyna, perfectly aware of Celimus’s ruthlessness and brutality but unwilling to subject her people to a war they cannot win, ponders her limited options. Wyl, meanwhile, tries to discover the fate of his sister, Ylena, finding that the monastery where she took shelter has been burned, its monks tortured and murdered at Celimus’s orders. Wyl must also confront the magical being whose contrivance Myrren’s gift is. Various other subplots keep the pot bubbling merrily.
The drawback here is that Wyl’s persistent failings—inability to learn from his mistakes, take elementary safety precautions or pay attention to his surroundings—drive the plot. Still, McIntosh’s narrative, with its distressed damsels, contending sorcerers, blackhearted villains and double-dealing courtiers, remains compulsively readable.Pub Date: July 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-074758-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Eos/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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