A simple, brief story to pass a couple of hours.
The story of a king, damsels in distress and knights to rescue them all.
An engaging prologue sets the stage as sixth-century Eastern Europe. The easy to read layout initially seems geared toward a young adult audience, but more mature readers will also find the story of Edmund, the future king, and Aldric, the future king’s champion, enticing. Unfortunately, early promise gives way to structural problems, the foremost being the lack of any historical detail in dialogue, dress or setting. Even the names of the majority of the characters are not sixth-century Eastern European in origin but rather a mix of Old English, German and Latin names. The lack of historical detail presents a story that could take place in any period in history or even in the future. Additionally, the simplistic plot skims the surface, never getting too deep, which prevents the reader from feeling either great tragedy or great love. Characters are predictable, yet likeable, and fall into either good guys or bad guys. Edmund is destined to be king but isn’t sure that’s what he wants to be. Ursula, his consort through an arranged marriage, is deceitful and conniving. Aldric becomes king through circumstance, though he has no interest in kingship. There are no surprises in store for the reader, delightful or otherwise. While the narration of the prologue and battle scenes is well crafted, the dialogue in subsequent chapters feels stiff. Whether between love interests such as Edmund and Ursula, and Aldric and Anneliese, or between comrades such as Aldric and Nikolaus, the dialogue is used as a tool to create a tone of formality, but instead hinders the flow of the tale.
A simple, brief story to pass a couple of hours.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0982659403
Page Count: 164
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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