An occasionally enjoyable read that wraps up loose ends and sets up new stories in Frost's paranormal world.
In the fourth Night Prince novel, centuries-old Vlad Tepesh, aka Dracula, and his wife, Leila, battle shadowy necromancers who want to use his newfound love to control him.
Frost (Bound by Flames, 2015, etc.) first resurrected the legendary vampire in her popular Night Huntress series and gives him room here to unleash mayhem in defense of the first woman he has loved in his immortal life. Taking up where the last episode left off, the novel finds the married couple on a mission to break a curse that puts Leila in danger, only to find that an unknown group of enemies has learned of it and wants to capitalize on the vulnerability. As is standard in paranormal romance, this leads to a series of supernatural skirmishes, with the lead couple supported by a promiscuous Englishman and one of the oldest vampires in the world (who will be familiar to readers of the previous series). As they race across countries, enemies multiply, mountains crumble, and people and places go up in smoke. Among the good guys, there is the swapping of a soul to a demon for a favor, a human is turned into a vampire, allies are lost, and Leila tries to get Vlad to practice his communication skills. Their romance is expressed less through direct sexual or sentimental interactions and more through acts of self-sacrifice, collateral damage, and couple’s-therapy style conversations. The pair also seem to be retreading some of the plotlines of old novels, but their chemistry has its moments, and the movielike descriptions of magical locales provide fodder for the imagination.
An occasionally enjoyable read that wraps up loose ends and sets up new stories in Frost's paranormal world.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-207640-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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