An intense yet engaging urban fantasy jaunt.
Retired paranormal underworld assassin Gin Blanco can handle almost any physical threat, but when a figure from her past returns to charm her best friend and foster brother into a close relationship, she's convinced the woman is up to no good.
Gin is queen of the underworld in the Southern criminal stronghold of Ashland, though she doesn’t want to be. She’s spent the last few years creating a tight-knit quasi-family from a motley crew of friends and just wants to run her barbecue joint in peace. Unfortunately, she’s a prime target for a huge line of villains who want to take her out of the picture. Recently, she’s discovered that Fletcher, her mentor and father of her best friend, Finn, left her some post-mortem clues as to a shadowy figure from their past who everyone believed was dead but isn’t. Should that woman, Deirdre—Fletcher's wife and Finn's mother—ever come back to Ashland, she’ll be up to no good. By the time Gin gathers all the pieces and proof together, Deirdre has already reconnected with Finn, and he's resentful of Gin’s attempts to protect him and angry at her refusal to believe Deirdre’s intentions are good. So she plays a precarious game of trying to be supportive of Finn’s genuine desire to reconnect with a woman she believes betrayed him in the past while also quietly probing what Deirdre’s true motives are so that she can help Finn when she betrays him again. The 14th title in the Elemental Assassin series is a fast, furious, and entertaining romp in an intriguing though violent paranormal world, and Estep does an admirable job of moving the story forward, expressing Gin’s obvious discomfort at the complicated emotions she and her friends are navigating, all while balancing the psychological and physical threats Deirdre brings to Ashland. Occasionally, though, scenes and plot elements seem to be inserted more for shock value rather than growing authentically out of the characters or story.
An intense yet engaging urban fantasy jaunt.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1127-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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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