A grand, if sometimes grandiose, portrayal of a szabla-wielding hero.
Tomaszek (Dance the Golden Calf, 2016, etc.) offers a sweeping novel of historical military fiction set in 17th-century Poland.
Young Boles?aw Radok, known to most as “Bolek,” lives in the southern part of the country on his family’s farm. Although the land around him is one of beautiful mountains and lakes, it’s also full of danger. It’s the late 1600s, during the reign of King Jan III Sobieski, and threats of Ottoman invasion and harassment from bandits are very real. Bolek hopes to one day wield a curved sword, known as a szabla, and spill the blood of enemies with tremendous strikes. All his dreams seem lost, however, when his family farm is attacked by brigands. When help arrives in the form of four knights, Bolek’s life is forever changed. They’re part of a cavalry group known as the pancerni and annihilating aggressors is no more difficult to them than drinking vodka. Led by the religious yet deadly Priest, the men eventually agree to take Bolek under their wing. Should he survive his training, he will be a great hero like them—but doing so will be no easy task. Tomaszek makes Bolek’s journey an epic one, full of high-minded sentiments (“Each man is from God’s image, has dignity and, therefore, must be protected by a virtuous constitution,” says one of the pancerni) and discussions about honor (“All can be taken from you, save honor,” Bolek’s grandfather informs him). Action scenes are always around the corner, with plenty of flying arrows and galloping horses to carry the adventure along. A few coincidences drain some of the excitement, as does the fantastical nature of the ending, and some characters are so unrealistic that they seem almost otherworldly; Priest, for instance, is a defrocked clergyman who’s not only well versed in Latin, politics, warfare, horsemanship, and Catholicism, but he also reads Shakespeare before a battle. Nevertheless, the story travels well from farm to countryside to the famous Battle of Vienna in 1683—a conflict whose depiction shows deserved reverence for the bravery of King Sobieski and his men.
A grand, if sometimes grandiose, portrayal of a szabla-wielding hero.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-78099-522-9
Page Count: 385
Publisher: Roundfire Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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