Damian, a former slave in ancient Greece, learns the meaning of a prophecy in this final volume of the Delphi trilogy.
This historical novel continues the tale of Iannella’s Journey to Delphi (2012) and Destiny at Delphi (2013), which traced Damian’s path from age 12, when his village was razed in the First Sacred Wars in early-sixth-century B.C. Greece to his betrayal into slavery and his journey to Delphi, where he became an important adviser to the tyrant Kleisthenes. In this final volume, Damian at first seems to be cheating the destiny told to him by the Oracle at Delphi. He’s now happily married to Ariena—they’re expecting their first child—and he’s co-coordinator of the new Pythian Games and trainer to godlike athlete Phorcys. Furthermore, his great enemy, Scyron, is reported to be dead. When tragedy strikes, however, Damian must search his soul to find the true meaning of his destiny and the Orphic dictum to “know thyself.” Iannella again gives readers many intriguing, telling details about life, culture and attitudes in ancient Greece, including a reminder that marble statues were carefully painted with lifelike colors and a lesson in cemetery etiquette: “I poured some olive oil as a libation through a tube on one side of his grave and said prayers to Persephone and Orpheus.” By balancing mainstream Greek thought against the Orphics’ gentle precepts, Iannella illuminates Damian’s philosophical journey. It might be true, as Kleisthenes remarks, that “[t]his life is meant to be hard, if not cruel….All Greeks, deep down, understand this thought; they try to forget it.” But the novel also shows that a gentler perspective is possible, and Damian’s travails lead him to conclude that “[t]here must be darkness if the light is to be fully appreciated.” That said, the prose style can become flat, remote and prosaic at times, summarizing dialogue instead of showing it—even at especially dramatic moments: “I told them how he was the most pure and noble man I knew and that I was blessed to have him as my friend.”
An often satisfying conclusion to Damian’s story, with much to engage lovers of ancient history.
Pub Date: June 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1494837860
Page Count: 324
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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