A first-rate introduction to a protagonist as remarkable as the magic she wields.
A witch with dormant powers returns home to face an enigmatic killer and a possible family curse in the first installment of Mitchell’s (Cloak of Deceit, 2015) Skydancer fantasy series.
Briana “Bri” Spurrier is a promising young pianist living in Australia who’s on the verge of a record deal. She was born into a line of witches, the Zyne, who live in the San Juan Islands, but she left that world behind when she was 17; her powers were “bound,” or prevented from appearing, by her Oracle grandmother, Ce-Ce. There are, however, occasional flares of magic: specifically, Bri has a vision of Ce-Ce getting in a fatal car accident with Bri’s little sis, Tara. She goes back home, suspecting that her loved ones were actually murdered due to Ce-Ce’s cryptic message to her: “It’s him.” She’s also having visions of the killer (without seeing his face), but in order to track him down, she needs to be able to use her powers. Bri will need help from magic-law enforcers on the Synod Council, including her estranged father. There’s also a chance that she’s in danger from a curse on her family, but Bri is certain that she’s after a demon—one who wants a relic that she may or may not have. Mitchell’s tale is packed with enthralling subplots; for example, Bri discovers newfound powers, and she must also deal with her old flame, Kean, a Ward (or Zyne warrior), while her boyfriend Eric’s back in Australia. Even simple actions receive colorful descriptions: “His somber mask slid back into place, and his hands disappeared into his sleeves.” Much of the humor, meanwhile, comes through more mundane details, as when Bri has “that ‘wtf?’ look on her face.” A few reveals are outstanding, such as the explanation of the series’ title, and characters’ dilemmas are genuinely engaging: if Bri can somehow see the future, can she also change it? The ending will surely leave readers wanting more of Briana and the Zyne.
A first-rate introduction to a protagonist as remarkable as the magic she wields.Pub Date: June 21, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 432
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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