Though the book is vastly overelaborate, the steady pace and intricately fascinating details are relentlessly gripping; fans...
Second part of Islington’s doorstopper epic fantasy trilogy (The Shadow of What Was Lost, 2016), set in a world of the Gifted, whose magic lies in being able to tap into their own life force, and the Augurs, who wield a higher-order magic.
Islington supplies a "refresher" of the events of Book 1 that isn’t as helpful as you might suppose for reasons that will soon become clear. The laws that kept the Augurs and the Gifted constrained have been changed to allow them to defend Andarra against mysterious invaders. Three 16-year-olds who became friends at a school for the Gifted, Davian, Wirr, and Asha, now face different futures. Davian must learn to control his Augur powers and determine why the Boundary, put in place many years ago to keep out an invader called Aarkein Devaed, is weakening. Wirr, who, following his father’s death, is now Prince Torin the Northwarden, suspects that the story his father told him was false and must also deal with his interfering mother. By means of treachery, Asha’s Gifted powers have been suppressed, turning her into a Shadow; determined to find out how and why, she may discover more than she bargained for. Their friend Caeden has learned he’s an immortal; worse, he was once Aarkein Devaed but could not bear the crushing guilt and deleted his memories. Now he finds he needs them back; but is he really as evil as everybody says and he himself believes? With the narrative lacking the clear theme usually found in epic fantasy, the particulars assume critical importance; without them readers will be unable to decipher such magnificently gnomic passages as: "Andrael’s ridiculous weapon did its job and took my Reserve, so the Siphon is now bonded to Ashalia rather than me. If you want to seal the ilshara, she will need to find the final Tributary. The one that you set aside for Gassandrid, until he began to suspect and split himself."
Though the book is vastly overelaborate, the steady pace and intricately fascinating details are relentlessly gripping; fans of the first volume won’t be disappointed.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-27411-1
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Baker's hardcover debut, a formidable variant on the vampire theme, is an expansion and rewrite of a 1982 paperback Dhampire. When his wife is murdered, David Bathory—who keeps snakes and smuggles cocaine for a living—finds that the family he has tried to deny has caught up with him. One of his ancestors was Dracula, you see, and some of the family are vampires now. Others may become ``dhampires,'' which, though not vampires themselves, can achieve control of vampires belonging to previous generations of the family. Drawn towards the ancestral home, David meets the beautiful Dara, a soul mate and, it turns out, his sister. While making love, the two are possessed and forced to perform sex magic acts that empower one of David's family; subsequently, Dara vanishes. At first, David suspects his brother Michael of nurturing dhampire ambitions. Unfortunately, uncle Stephen is secretly controlling Michael; Stephen has captured Dara and also controls Alexandra, David's dead wife, who's now a vampire. Swiftly defeated, then shackled, beaten, and raped, David must place his hope in the Naga serpent magic he has inherited from his mother. Bloody and caustic, unsparing of detail, yet well handled and persuasive. Should do well with splatterpunk/vampire fans and other readers with stomachs at least as strong as their curiosity.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-85868-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Following his rather fine Dracula-meets-Sherlock Holmes yarn (Seance for a Vampire, 1994), Saberhagen tackles Camelot and King Arthur from a fresh perspective. Soon after the fall of Arthur, a group of players fleeing from the brutal warlord Comorre stumble upon a deserted, half-finished castle, perched dramatically above the sea, that supplies all their needs by magical means. In a sea cave deep beneath the castle, young Arby detects magical emanations from a tremendously powerful oracle—perhaps the rock-entombed bones of the legendary Merlin himself. Meanwhile, a band of Viking warriors arrive by boat and agree to help defend the castle against Comorre. Furthermore, in the 21st century, Dr. Elaine Brusan of the Antrobus Foundation perfects a revolutionary device capable of twisting space, time, and matter. She will soon be visited by the Fisher King, while outside the building stands an ambulance containing the wounded King Arthur, no less, and his sorceress sister, Morgan Le Fay. And all this is merely the prelude to a plot in which many of the characters strive against one another to discover and possess Merlin's bones, while Merlin himself schemes to establish a new and greater Camelot. Wildly, astonishingly different. So, despite a plot that doesn't bear close scrutiny and the irritant of multiple first- person narrators: a truly exhilarating jaunt.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-85563-X
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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