Intriguing and fun, the mystery unfolds like a socially conscious tour through a cabinet of curiosities.
Cheney follows her debut (The Golden City, 2013) with a killer sequel filled with magical sea people, both living and dead.
Police consultant Duilio Ferreira is not surprised when his brother comes to him for help finding a missing girl instead of going straight to the police. In the Golden City, a richly drawn version of 1900s Lisbon in which the reigning prince has banished magical creatures, nonhumans have to keep a low profile. Like the brothers, the girl is a selkie: a seal person with an alluring scent and irresistible charm. When she turns up dead, Duilio and his police officer cousin, Joaquim, deduce that her killer has skinned her alive to harness the magical qualities of her pelt—and she’s not his only victim. It’s a clever spin on the police procedural trope of a predator who targets illegal immigrants, prostitutes or other women society neglects. And as the medical examiners get a good look at the unusual bodies that crop up, so do the readers through Cheney’s detailed descriptions of scales and tails in varying stages of decay. A medical journal called The Seat of Magic may shed light on the killer’s motive if Duilio and his crew can track him down without drawing attention to themselves, and an underground network of sympathizers who leak information to Duilio at great personal risk help underscore the growing unrest within the city that may be explored in future books. Meanwhile, the private detective turns up the heat with Oriana Paredes, the former spy for the sereia (or siren people), who's masquerading as a handmaiden after being left for dead. Though she hates hiding her gills beneath a high collar, Oriana hopes to make Duilio her mate. Oriana is no wallflower: Sereia women court the men, not the other way around. Readers may want to bookmark the page where she shows Duilio her dorsal stripe.
Intriguing and fun, the mystery unfolds like a socially conscious tour through a cabinet of curiosities.Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-451-41776-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: ROC/Penguin
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A somewhat fragmentary nocturnal shadows Jim Nightshade and his friend Will Halloway, born just before and just after midnight on the 31st of October, as they walk the thin line between real and imaginary worlds. A carnival (evil) comes to town with its calliope, merry-go-round and mirror maze, and in its distortion, the funeral march is played backwards, their teacher's nephew seems to assume the identity of the carnival's Mr. Cooger. The Illustrated Man (an earlier Bradbury title) doubles as Mr. Dark. comes for the boys and Jim almost does; and there are other spectres in this freakshow of the mind, The Witch, The Dwarf, etc., before faith casts out all these fears which the carnival has exploited... The allusions (the October country, the autumn people, etc.) as well as the concerns of previous books will be familiar to Bradbury's readers as once again this conjurer limns a haunted landscape in an allegory of good and evil. Definitely for all admirers.
Pub Date: June 15, 1962
ISBN: 0380977273
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962
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