A quick fantasy read with a solid moral underpinning.
Galloway’s debut fantasy novella unveils a secret world replete with goblins, a fairy princess, an evil witch, and a magical wizard.
Eric is a human who’s long been fascinated by the myths of fairies, and he eventually goes to England to investigate the legends. After interviewing some locals, he sets up a fairy feast in the Forbidden Forest. The fairies join him for drunken cavorting and then bring him back to their land. His arrival triggers a long-dormant prophecy about the downfall of the wicked witch queen. Angelica, a fairy princess who was bred and raised by unicorns, has been training as a warrior, waiting for the right time to lead her people to reclaim their land from the queen. The people believe that Eric is a legendary wizard who’s key to the witch’s destruction, so Angelica and her team later rescue him from a deadly trap. They train him, and soon Eric and Angelica are working out plans to take down the queen. With ingenuity, supreme sacrifice, and teamwork, they kill the queen’s most powerful ally, the Collector. With him gone, they can breach the castle and reclaim the land for the people. The character of Angelica is a brave warrior princess who will provide a great role model for young girls; she isn’t afraid to fight or sacrifice for the greater good when necessary. Eric’s sense of adventure, even when facing his own death, is uplifting, and his resilience after losing his ties to the human world will remind readers that life can be wonderful if one lets go of preconceived notions about what’s truly important. The way the entire community works together, even to the extent of sacrificing their own lives, makes a powerful statement about solidarity and what it takes to defeat oppression. The fantasy world is rich and lush, showcasing Galloway’s fantastic imagination, and the pacing moves quickly forward. There are times when the prose is clichéd or awkward (“Needless to say, the spontaneous celebrations started popping up all over the place”), but the story is well-paced enough to transcend these moments.
A quick fantasy read with a solid moral underpinning.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4931-7584-0
Page Count: 50
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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