A tale that wallops readers with both magical and emotional twists.
This fantasy debut finds a medieval city under siege by demons searching for a powerful artifact.
On the planet Palatovia, in the city of Centuria, 10-year-old Ptolemy has just run away from home. His mother, Angela, slapped him after he refused to abandon his studies with the Book of Stars, which helps him discern prophecies. In the nearby forest, Ptolemy and his horse, Beth, encounter strangely moving soldiers in armor. They have red eyes, speak a foreign tongue, and attack him. Yet these demons are merely a first wave heading for Centuria under the direction of a foul being called Lord Emalf. They search for an artifact that will help him conquer the globe. Centuria’s fortifications fall when giant worms erupt from the ground. Gen. Gathar and Gen. Yiorn do their best to save and evacuate the city, but even King Katimi is captured by the demonic soldiers. After the opening battle, Centuria’s survivors head for the city of Salidon. There, King Roberts sends a small band of heroes, including Gathar and the enigmatic ranger Yalta Menzar, on a quest to find Horace Galthon, a hermit warlock. Horace explains that the best way to defeat Lord Emalf is with the help of the sea-dwelling nes-kaliba. For his series opener, Harris works brisk narrative magic with a streamlined plot and classical fantasy elements. Initially the panoramic storytelling highlights numerous characters, and readers expecting a chosen-one saga may be disappointed. But vibrant worldbuilding carries the day, and the author captivates out of the gate with his flair for names. His demons, for example, are the bêtes noires, and their general is Nisgi. Action buffs should revel in the copious gory carnage; the head of a decapitated demon “hit the ground like an anvil falling off a mountain.” Psychological insights pepper the prose, as when readers learn that Ptolemy felt “in the back of his mind, the stinging sensation from his mother’s slap,” which motivates him to sabotage Nisgi’s horde. In the final third, the story grows placid only to shatter with even grander chaos.
A tale that wallops readers with both magical and emotional twists.Pub Date: May 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5440-6340-9
Page Count: 322
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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