A lengthy but thoroughly captivating tale and a commendable series launch.
A young nobleman and aspiring mage gets caught up in an attempt to assassinate a king and stop a war in Hubbard’s (The Dark Hour, 2016, etc.) fantasy novel.
Nineteen-year-old Kane Bailey is sorcerer Master Cypher’s apprentice in the Consaria kingdom. One night, while making potions in the study, a female intruder accosts Kane, demanding to know where King Hugo is. She tries to kill the monarch but fails, narrowly evading capture and bringing along an unwilling Kane as an expedient hostage. Callie, the would-be assassin, considers ransoming Kane, as he’s a noble, but she’s already angered her clan leader, Giacomo Kently. It seems that the Jackal, a legendary killer, had farmed out the assassination job to the clan and will want his payment returned—coins that the clan has already spent. Callie pins her hopes on the “Three Roses,” which Kane overheard the king mention to Master Cypher on the night of the attempted assassination. Neither Kane nor Callie knows what the Three Roses actually are, but Callie is sure that they must be valuable—and that they somehow relate to the ongoing war against the neighboring land of Lonsaran, which King Hugo’s been avidly promoting. The two’s search, meanwhile, will take them to seedy places like The Silver Vein, which is rife with hooligans who won’t think twice about abducting a nobleman—or doing something worse. Along the way, Callie and Kane keep their eyes open for the lethal Jackal, who’s specifically targeted her for his refund. Hubbard’s story highlights a few familiar fantasy genre elements: goblins rear their ugly heads, and Callie’s clan buys a magic-negating crystal with the coins that they accepted for the proposed hit. But the author concentrates mainly on his story’s human element, and as such, his characters are well-developed. Kane’s noble status makes him rather stuffy, and he’s shown to be disconcerted by a decent meal of fatty steak, sans utensils. He also witnesses debauchery that’s a sharp contrast to his noble life; in The Silver Vein alone, Kane spots a cockfight, a couple engaged in public sex, blatant drunkards, and a bevy of fresh corpses. The highly detailed descriptions are coupled with contemporary-sounding dialogue, as when Callie assures Kane that his use of magic “totally kick[s] ass.” Hubbard doesn’t specify the year in which the story takes place, which subverts expectations that some readers may have for a tale set in centuries past. Memorable moments include Callie “city-jumping” (which is sometimes more bluntly called “roof-jumping”) and one sinister character requesting volunteers for a religious practice called the Gateway to Heaven, which is, quite simply, torture. The impressively expansive plot includes men and women being conscripted into the king’s army and an intriguing, somewhat familiar religion featuring Micah, the son of God. The characters’ quest to find the Roses gets sidetracked during the final act, which briefly separates Callie and Kane, but the hunt will clearly continue in the planned sequel.
A lengthy but thoroughly captivating tale and a commendable series launch.Pub Date: June 4, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 509
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2017
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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