A taut fantasy tale of bloodshed and politics with a complex hero battling her own personal demons.
In Barrett’s fantasy novel, a young ruler attempts to keep the four realms of the kingdom from falling apart but faces enemies, both known and unknown, at every turn.
This second installment of The Keepers of Imbria series finds magic-wielding royal Maialen, the Keeper of Earth, still reeling over the death of her rebel half sister, Orabelle, the Keeper of Water, ten years earlier. While Maialen can control the element of earth, even she is powerless to make crops grow in the parched and struggling land of Samirra, one of the four realms of Imbria. As Imbria’s four constituent kingdoms desperately cling to a tenuous peace, Blaise, the Keeper of Fire (whose obsession with Orabelle lives on even after her death), wants nothing but war. The appearance of Thyrr, Orabelle’s brother from the lands of the savage Fomori (or “blooddrinkers”), throws an already unstable situation into complete chaos as he attempts to claim the throne of Lehar, another Imbrian realm, as the legitimate heir to Orabelle. (While Thyrr doesn’t possess the Pearl that would grant him elemental powers, he does have the mythical Warding Stone, which strips powers from others.) Orabelle’s young son also comes out of hiding to stake a claim to the throne, forcing Maialen to find a path forward to save Imbria from itself. To do so, she’ll have to join forces with an unexpected ally and face a shocking betrayal from someone close to her. Barrett once again weaves together heart-pounding action and complex characters to create an epic tale that tackles themes of grief, forgiveness, and self-determination. Naturalistic dialogue and descriptive prose combine for a fantasy world that feels completely plausible, even with such outlandish creatures as the Sirens: “They approached me almost timidly and I stared at their awful, beautiful faces, so amorphous, like liquid barely holding its shape. One of them tilted its head and made a mournful sound, reaching out to touch my face. I slapped its hand away, my fingers slipping through the seawater body and making me shudder in revulsion.”
A taut fantasy tale of bloodshed and politics with a complex hero battling her own personal demons.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9798988889137
Page Count: 315
Publisher: Anthem in Art
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
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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