A simple but transcendent adventure story.
Debut novelist Kishek’s story of an aspiring samurai in 16th-century Japan introduces readers to a worthy protagonist with a bellyful of hate.
After 8-year-old Washi sees the evil warlord Senshu slay his loving parents and torch his humble home, he immediately vows revenge. He’s adopted by his Uncle Kuma and Aunt Kitsune, who are childless. Although he wasn’t born to the samurai class, Kuma teaches himself to be one and to be an exemplar of Bushido, the samurai’s code of honor; Washi learns not only all the martial arts, but also the art of swordsmithing. Kuma, now retired from fighting, is a legend both as a fighter and a swordsmith. Washi couldn’t have a better or wiser teacher and becomes formidable at both endeavors. Senshu’s men, on the other hand, are Ronin: warriors with samurai skills but with no honor, no Bushido. Washi grows to manhood, marries the lovely Naomi, and they have a son, whom they name Kazuki. But Senshu still rules the land and the people still suffer. Will Washi have his revenge or, as Kuma counsels, let go of his murderous rage? A final, gut-wrenching outrage seals both Washi’s and Senshu’s fates. In this book, author Kishek presents readers with a clash of pure good and pure evil in a tone that’s much more mythic than it is realistic. Over the course of the story, Washi dispatches bad guys like a superhero, and the narrative’s heroic simplicity sometimes demands that readers suspend their senses of disbelief. That said, the last page, which follows a morally challenging climax, is prose poetry of a high order, and the animelike illustrations are wonderful throughout.
A simple but transcendent adventure story.Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73216-571-7
Page Count: 244
Publisher: King James Designs Inc.
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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