A fantasy tale that offers some intriguing characters and plotlines but lacks a strong central focus to tie them all...
In the land of Etus, disparate heroes and rogues embark on separate adventures that alter the course of their destinies in Seab’s debut dystopian fantasy novel.
As the novel opens, a starving girl named Clarity Burns forages for food in a dark alley. A mysterious man named Barthew rescues her, but she fears that his offer of food and shelter may be too good to be true. Elsewhere in Etus, a young man named Denrel experiences a frightening vision of violent beasts that jolts him to the core of his being. In another remote part of the land, a healer, Willow, tries in vain to save Swiik, an injured female dolfina (a race of sentient dolphins); before her death, Swiik passes an urgent message to Willow, along with a mysterious object called an oddment. Willow tries to decipher the object’s meaning with the help of her friend Geldane and a historian named Everam. Meanwhile, a man named Fillip Brent forms a series of peculiar alliances in an attempt to expose corruption and inequality throughout the land. Seab’s novel is an ambitious but uneven mix of fantasy and political allegory. The multiple storylines keep the narrative moving at a relatively brisk pace, but the various stories and characters rarely connect. In some instances, the novel introduces a character or plotline and quickly drops it, only to suddenly pick it up again much later. For example, Clarity Burns disappears from the story after the second chapter; Seab then introduces several additional characters before finally resuming Clarity’s story, fully halfway through the novel. Some of the storylines work well: Willow’s investigation of the oddment, for example, is intriguing and nicely paced. Fillip Brent’s storyline begins on a promising note but might have benefited from a more concrete connection to the other stories. Overall, the novel gets lost in a maze of character arcs and plot twists.
A fantasy tale that offers some intriguing characters and plotlines but lacks a strong central focus to tie them all together.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490900544
Page Count: 418
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A striking literary fantasy informed by Arden's deep knowledge of and affection for this time and place.
A satisfying conclusion to a trilogy set in medieval times in the area on the verge of becoming Russia.
In a luxuriously detailed yet briskly suspenseful follow-up to The Bear and the Nightingale (2017) and The Girl in the Tower (2018), Arden's historically based fantasy follows heroic Vasya—a young woman with a strong connection to the spirits of the place where she lives—as she attempts to save her family and her country from evil forces. Because the novel starts with a bang where the preceding volume left off, with Moscow nearly burned to a crisp by a Firebird imperfectly controlled by Vasya, readers are advised to backtrack to the two earlier books rather than attempt to sort out all the characters and backstory on the fly. Among the humans are Vasya's sister, Olga, compromised by her desire for wealth and position; her brother, Sasha, a monk with a taste for the military life; Grand Prince Dmitrii; and corrupt priest Konstantin. Among the inhuman are the warring brothers Morozko, the winter-king with whom Vasya conducts a conflicted romance, and Medved, a demon addicted to chaos. Arden keeps the narrative fresh by sending Vasya questing into fantastic realms, each with its own demanding set of rules and its own alluring or forbidding geography, and by introducing new “chyerti,” demons or spirits, including an officious little mushroom spirit who indiscriminately plies Vasya with fungi, some edible and some distinctly not. Fans of Russian mythology will be pleased to find that Baba Yaga puts in a cameo appearance to straighten out some of the complicated genealogy. The trilogy leads up to the Battle of Kulikovo, which many consider the beginning of a united Russia. Arden neatly establishes parallels between Vasya's internal struggles, between attachment and freedom or the human world and the spiritual one, for example, and those taking place in the world around her.
A striking literary fantasy informed by Arden's deep knowledge of and affection for this time and place.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-88599-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For die-hard mermaid-fiction lovers only.
When a young librarian comes into possession of the diary of a traveling circus from more than 200 years ago, he decides the book may hold clues to a family mystery he needs to solve to save his sister’s life.
Narrator Simon and his younger sister, Enola, grew up in an 18th-century house on a bluff overlooking Long Island Sound. Taking after her mother, a former circus performer who drowned herself when Simon was 7, Enola travels with a carnival as a tarot card reader. Simon is still living in their dangerously dilapidated family home when, out of the blue on one June day, he receives a book from an antiquarian bookseller, who had noticed Simon's grandmother's name inside. Soon Simon discovers a frightening pattern among his female ancestors, all unnaturally good swimmers, all drowning as young women on July 24. If this “coincidence” sounds a bit far-fetched, it sets the bar for the novel’s credibility. Swyler intercuts Simon’s present drama—intensifying research into the diary’s history, loss of his job at the local library, incipient but already rocky love affair with fellow librarian Alice, return home of Enola, irretrievable collapse of the family manse—with the romantic tragedy of Amos, a traveling circus performer, and Evangeline, an aquatic performer with a guilty secret. Born in the 1780s and abandoned by his parents, Amos is mute when he joins a traveling troupe to perform a disappearing act as a “Wild Boy.” The fortuneteller takes him under her wing, teaching him to read the future. But despite her warnings, he falls for the dangerously mysterious Evangeline. She has his baby girl, and the havoc that follows leads straight to the curse that Simon, a whiny loser, is frantic to solve before someone else dies. A bit fey, even as romantic whimsy.
For die-hard mermaid-fiction lovers only.Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05480-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
