Atmospheric and beguiling.
Old traditions and folk stories are not just tall tales in Comeau’s historical fantasy novel.
It’s the 1820s, and 16-year-old Morrigan Lane is living with her family in a small village in Ireland. With so many in her town heavily relying on fishing as both a food and income source, Morrigan dreams of sailing the sea and taking up the trade, but it’s not something women are allowed to do. While taking one of her frequent walks along the coast, Morrigan is struck by a vision of a man in a chariot with a sword at his side, calling out to her from the sea. The villagers whisper that she has seen Manannán mac Lair, Guardian of the Otherworld, one of the creatures from myths and folktales told years ago. Morrigan’s father thinks she may have “the sight,” as it runs in their family, but this will not help her in a world where women are only meant to be good Catholics and quiet wives. Worried about her future prospects and not wanting to stifle her, Morrigan’s mother sends her daughter to study with The Crooked Woman, Cathleen, who is the town go-to for remedies, medicines, and midwifery. It’s Cathleen who believes and calms Morrigan when a wolf comes and speaks to her, calling her An Fhoínse (a “spring from which the life force flows”). The Otherworld knows of Morrigan’s empathy and feeling for nature and her reverence for life, and it needs her help to flourish—but hiding her visions and calling from the Church and her frightening schoolmaster, Winnett, will be a difficult task. In this fantasy novel, Comeau uses the Irish setting—which always feels a little magical on its own—and tales of the Otherworld and Tuatha dé Danann to craft an ethereal, fablelike narrative. Morrigan, as well as her friends, family, and fellow villagers, come alive on the page, fitting perfectly into the picturesque village, a bulwark against the giant, tumultuous world around them—and the creatures that inhabit it. Morrigan’s frustration with the imposed limits on her gender adds a fascinating dimension to the spooky tale.
Atmospheric and beguiling.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781961905450
Page Count: 358
Publisher: 12 Willows Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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