A murky and often baffling adventure story.
In Logan’s adventure novel, a modern-day devotee of the Knights Templar fights to preserve their legacy.
In this sequel to Rainbows End (2023), the author follows the mystical adventures of Zarfidi Virtue, one of the last remaining allies of the Knights Templar, who, as the story opens in 2024, is pursuing his mission to guarantee a long-standing Christian presence on Temple Mount by excavating deep under the ruins of the Temple of Jerusalem. He and his allies (including Elizabeth Corday, the head of the company overseeing the excavation, who gets more of the spotlight here than she did in the previous volume) are opposed by the forces of evil in the form of the “white witch” Annie Palmer and the “evil spirit” Morgan le Fray; their battles and searches for ancient relics (“I took Excalibur from the dying Arthur in the lake at Camelot”) take them all over the world. Logan makes very little attempt to orient potential new readers to the events or personalities that were established in the previous book in the series; neophytes are thrust into the narrative with only very feeble running synopses for context. New and returning readers alike will have to deal with other obstacles: There’s a good deal of lazy writing, from cliches like “out of the blue” and “new lease of life” to innumerable repetitions of “for some reason,” and there are careless spell-check-proof gaffs like “For a while they disgusted the possibility.” The sheer pace of Logan’s narrative can make the events depicted feel compellingly urgent, and his characters’ tendency to philosophize (“Sometimes, the force of blind ambition only leads one of courage into the field of delusion and self-destruction”) is often engaging. Still, most readers will likely find this a confusing jumble of a narrative.
A murky and often baffling adventure story.Pub Date: Dec. 23, 2024
ISBN: 9798823039161
Page Count: 268
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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