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
To use the parlance of the period, a highly relevant retrospective.
Nantucket, not Woodstock, is the main attraction in Hilderbrand’s (Winter in Paradise, 2018, etc.) bittersweet nostalgia piece about the summer of 1969.
As is typical with Hilderbrand’s fiction, several members of a family have their says. Here, that family is the “stitched together” Foley-Levin clan, ruled over by the appropriately named matriarch, Exalta, aka Nonny, mother of Kate Levin. Exalta’s Nantucket house, All’s Fair, also appropriately named, is the main setting. Kate’s three older children, Blair, 24, Kirby, 20, and Tiger, 19, are products of her first marriage, to Wilder Foley, a war veteran, who shot himself. Second husband David Levin is the father of Jessie, who’s just turned 13. Tiger has been drafted and sends dispatches to Jessie from Vietnam. Kirby has been arrested twice while protesting the war in Boston. (Don’t tell Nonny!) Blair is married and pregnant; her MIT astrophysicist husband, Angus, is depressive, controlling, and deceitful—the unmelodramatic way Angus’ faults sneak up on both Blair and the reader is only one example of Hilderbrand’s firm grasp on real life. Many plot elements are specific to the year. Kirby is further rebelling by forgoing Nantucket for rival island Martha’s Vineyard—and a hotel job close to Chappaquiddick. Angus will be working at Mission Control for the Apollo 11 lunar landing. Kirby has difficult romantic encounters, first with her arresting officer, then with a black Harvard student whose mother has another reason, besides Kirby’s whiteness, to distrust her. Pick, grandson of Exalta’s caretaker, is planning to search for his hippie mother at Woodstock. Other complications seem very up-to-date: a country club tennis coach is a predator and pedophile. Anti-Semitism lurks beneath the club’s genteel veneer. Kate’s drinking has accelerated since Tiger’s deployment overseas. Exalta’s toughness is seemingly untempered by grandmotherly love. As always, Hilderbrand’s characters are utterly convincing and immediately draw us into their problems, from petty to grave. Sometimes, her densely packed tales seem to unravel toward the end. This is not one of those times.
To use the parlance of the period, a highly relevant retrospective.Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-42001-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
At the outset, this might seem like minor Morrison (A Mercy, 2008, etc.), not only because its length is borderline novella,...
A deceptively rich and cumulatively powerful novel.
At the outset, this might seem like minor Morrison (A Mercy, 2008, etc.), not only because its length is borderline novella, but because the setup seems generic. A black soldier returns from the Korean War, where he faces a rocky re-entry, succumbing to alcoholism and suffering from what would subsequently be termed PTSD. Yet perhaps, as someone tells him, his major problem is the culture to which he returns: “An integrated army is integrated misery. You all go fight, come back, they treat you like dogs. Change that. They treat dogs better.” Ultimately, the latest from the Nobel Prize–winning novelist has something more subtle and shattering to offer than such social polemics. As the novel progresses, it becomes less specifically about the troubled soldier and as much about the sister he left behind in Georgia, who was married and deserted young, and who has fallen into the employ of a doctor whose mysterious experiments threaten her life. And, even more crucially, it’s about the relationship between the brother and his younger sister, which changes significantly after his return home, as both of them undergo significant transformations. “She was a shadow for most of my life, a presence marking its own absence, or maybe mine,” thinks the soldier. He discovers that “while his devotion shielded her, it did not strengthen her.” As his sister is becoming a woman who can stand on her own, her brother ultimately comes to terms with dark truths and deep pain that he had attempted to numb with alcohol. Before they achieve an epiphany that is mutually redemptive, even the earlier reference to “dogs” reveals itself as more than gratuitous.Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-59416-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
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