Intriguing storylines, creatures and weapons, but the human component is lacking.
In Martin’s debut fantasy tale, warring states wage bloody battles in a parallel universe.
Earthlike planet Xahr, populated by pugnacious, medieval-type humans, is rocked by perpetual war between the continental powers of the Banthyk Union and the Kingdom of Sarkrea. The right-thinking residents of Banthyk ride above their swampy homeland on the backs of gigantic lizards called trazlixes. The Sarkreans—bad guys who have shaved heads—use a mineral called convesium to heal their wounds and perform other magical feats. A host of peculiarly named substances, creatures and people course through the book, though Martin helpfully includes a lengthy introduction and frequent asides to explain each strange new word in this strange new world. He’s a little too helpful, in fact, as the pedantic exposition impedes the narrative flow; the map at the beginning of the book and the glossary at the end would have sufficed. The story also trips with writing tics that detract from the author’s clever creations. Too often he indulges in passive verbs and weak constructions—“Determination was evident,” he flatly notes of a wounded fighter’s mindset—and he sprinkles the text with clunky phrasing and words. Even if not always serviceable, the writing seems salvageable. At times, the prose is even pungent and pithy, as with a description of the Banthyk swamps: “A familiar smell of dead and rotting animals and plants permeated the air as the striding lizards plunged through the marsh.” But the plot is overly simplistic and most of the cast are more like video game caricatures than real-life characters. Although the feuding warriors engage in plenty of action-packed battles—often dispatching one another in creatively gory ways—too few well-developed personalities emerge from the carnage, and the leading heroes and villains come across as wooden. Many of the pages given over to exposition would be more valuable if devoted to further developing the sketchy characters and plot.
Intriguing storylines, creatures and weapons, but the human component is lacking.Pub Date: April 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-1470015374
Page Count: 246
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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