Long on imagination and word count; not for the casual fan of fantasy.
From debut author Hope comes an epic fantasy novel about a group of friends, a college of magic, and a time of great disorder.
As Jon Madraig rides his war-ready stallion through the streets of the city of Lauria, he is clearly not a local. With his blue eyes and pale complexion, Jon is “a descendant of a strong house of warriors from the highlands of Calon.” Viewed with suspicion, Jon’s ultimate destination is the esteemed College of Magic in the city of Shandrilos. A truly spectacular place, Jon reflects that “nowhere else had magic users come together to share their knowledge in such a way, and definitely nowhere else had conflicting priesthoods; the Nordic Druids and the Alban Monks been brought together!” Jon meets with old friend Darin, and the two head to the college for the Grand Council of the Wildlands. Darin, a skilled swordsman and knight of the order of Saint Karodra, is just one of Jon’s many talented friends expected to arrive at the school. A commotion in the catacombs beneath Shandrilos requires an investigation, and Jon and his cohorts are tapped for an adventure on which they’ll encounter goblins, elves, enchanters, sorcerers, and other magical beings. Overflowing with characters like Val’Ant Greycloak (an elf lord of the wild) and Elgon the Golden (a Nordic warrior mage), the story if full of dense fantasy. Descriptions can be superfluous, such as the information that a sabre-staff is “a weapon virtually unknown to humans save for perhaps weapons experts” and is much “like a short staff about three feet long with a long slightly curved blade on the end.” Readers comfortable juggling such fare on a massive scale are likely to uncover a complex story that is as imaginative as it is expansive. Ultimately much stranger than the standard hack-and-slash caper, the reader can never be quite sure what spell or creature or unexpected visitation lies just around the corner.
Long on imagination and word count; not for the casual fan of fantasy.Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5194-1204-1
Page Count: 766
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2016
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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