A book that should appeal to grown-up Potter-philes.
Near Truro, where Britain meets the legends of the mythic sea, Gavin Stokes awaits his Auntie Gwen at an estate called Pendurra.
Gavin has heard a woman’s voice since childhood, a voice he refers to as Miss Grey. His mother thinks he’s batty. His father thinks he’s contrary. His school has suspended him. With parents away for winter vacation, Gavin is sent to Auntie Gwen. In this first of a trilogy, Treadwell links young Gavin to magus John Fiste, a student of “the unseen world” in 1537. On his way to Truro, Gavin encounters Hester Lightfoot, a scholar at Oxford forced to resign because she too hears a voice. Gavin’s aunt isn’t on hand to meet the train, and so Hester drops him off at Gwen’s lodge on the grounds of Pendurra’s ancient manor house. There, Gavin encounters its owner, Tristram Uren, and his fey and feckless 13-year-old daughter Marina. Setting and atmosphere are perfect for a gothic-tinged, magic-driven story: a forbidding opening; strange characters; bizarre noises and shadowy visions; and a narrative that slowly but inexorably circles toward seemingly inevitable doom. Shifting from Gavin’s current day to Fiste’s era, the story reveals the great magus is Johannes Faust, whose skill with the black arts allowed him to travel in time to meet Helen of Troy and Cassandra. That there is a link between Fiste/Faust and Gavin becomes apparent when Gavin encounters a mysterious woman near Hester’s village who refers to him as Gawain. She asks Gavin to take her burden, that being “There will be fire and blood…The world will find it a bitter weight.” The book thereafter romps toward a surrealistic and fantastical conclusion filled with dryads and pukas, mermaids and a giant talking crow, trees that come alive, malevolent angels and Gavin's heroic overcoming. Ripe with literary language and classical references, Treadwell’s novel shape-shifts between bewitchingly perplexing and supernaturally entertaining.
A book that should appeal to grown-up Potter-philes.Pub Date: July 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6164-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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