Third entry in Clemens's fantasy saga (Wit’ch Storm, 1999, etc.) set in the kingdom of Alasea, where young blood magick-powered wit’ch Elena and the usual array of helpers must recover the lost Blood Diary in order to defeat the world-threatening Dark Lord and his customary evil lieutenant. Ho-hum, though fresh in the detail and lively in the telling. The other piece of news: Clemens has succumbed to Doorstopper Syndrome, wherein plain things (“magic”) become pompous (“magick”), each succeeding volume grows larger (448 pp. to 496 pp. to 560 pp.), and the author, abetted by delinquent editors, heaves literary judgment out the window.
Pub Date: July 5, 2000
ISBN: 0-345-41709-7
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Satisfying on all levels of the reading experience: thrilling, emotionally resonant, and cerebral. Escape to Witch Mountain...
The product of a long-running alchemical experiment, twins Roger and Dodger struggle to understand their unique circumstances and gain control over them.
In the late 19th century, ambitious young alchemist Asphodel Baker tried to rewrite reality to create a better world. She set in motion a long-range plan to incarnate the alchemical Doctrine of Ethos, encoding her scheme in a series of children’s books destined to become classics. In the present day, the considerably more ruthless James Reed, who is her creation and her killer, breeds twins designed to each incarnate half of the Doctrine; once they have fully matured, united, and manifested as “the living force that holds the universe together,” he will seize their power to control everything. Failed experiments are terminated. Roger Middleton, brilliant with languages, develops a strange telepathic connection with Dodger Cheswich, a math genius living across the country from him. Despite all of Reed’s brutal and covert efforts to keep the pair apart so their abilities will flower fully, they cannot help re-encountering each other and then separating in the wake of tragedy. Their attempts to avoid becoming one of Reed’s failures force them to draw upon their more arcane powers: Roger can persuade people—and reality itself—to bend to his wishes, while Dodger can actually reverse time back to a certain fixed point. With the help of Erin, the living incarnation of Order, they must craft the timeline that allows them to survive long enough to realize their potential. Books that include magic range across a spectrum that puts rules-based, logical magic on one end and serendipitous magic with no obvious cause or structure on the other. This book falls intriguingly far on the logic end; with its experiments and protocols, it redefines what is typically meant by science fantasy. If there’s a flaw in McGuire's (That Ain’t Witchcraft, 2019, etc.) gripping story, it’s that it isn't clear how Reed could really gain complete control over the Doctrine long term, nor why Reed’s followers actually believe that he would cede any of the Doctrine’s power were he to gain it.
Satisfying on all levels of the reading experience: thrilling, emotionally resonant, and cerebral. Escape to Witch Mountain for grown-ups.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-19552-4
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Scalzi continues to be almost insufferably good at his brand of fun but think-y sci-fi adventure.
In the first of a new series, brutal politics and pitiless physics threaten an interstellar empire built on trade.
The Interdependency is a group of barren planets and space stations ruled by mercantile trading houses and linked by the Flow, an extradimensional mode of travel. Occasional shifts in the Flow have cut off the Interdependency’s connection to some planets (including Earth), but it's remained relatively stable...until now. Count Claremont, a physicist stationed on the remote planet of End, has determined that the Interdependency will soon lose access to the Flow completely. Once that happens, every member of the Interdependency will be cut off from all the others by impassible light-years of distance, and a delicate web of commerce and survival will dissolve. Claremont sends his son to the Interdependency’s ruler, the Emperox Attavio IV, to share their findings before the Flow routes disappear. But Attavio IV is dying, and his daughter, Cardenia Wu-Patrick, was never intended to assume the throne. The reluctant new emperox is immediately confronted with assassination attempts and the ruthless machinations of the ambitious House of Nohamapetan, whose members seem to have their own knowledge of the radical change in the Flow. Readers might wonder whether Scalzi can write another space opera that shares the elements that made his Old Man’s War series (The End of All Things, 2015, etc.) so popular but be sufficiently different to feel fresh. Both include political plotting, plenty of snark, puzzle-solving, and a healthy dose of action, but there’s just enough here that’s new for this to avoid becoming a retread. There’s nothing groundbreaking, but you’ll still want to find out what happens next.
Scalzi continues to be almost insufferably good at his brand of fun but think-y sci-fi adventure.Pub Date: March 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8888-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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