Well-crafted entertainment.
Third in the author’s Chronicles fantasy series (Medalon; Treason Keep, both 2004).
After the surrender of Medalon's armies to the invading Kariens, young R’shiel (the “demon child” of prophecy) and Tarja (the outlawed Defender captain) flee to neighboring Hythria to regroup. R’shiel has engineered the marriage of Damin Wolfblade, a Hythrun warlord, and Princess Adrina of Fardohnya, hoping to unite their nations to help oppose the Kariens. But Damin arrives home to find a power struggle underway for the throne of Hythria, while Adrina’s royal father is implacable in his hatred for the Hythruns—especially the Wolfblade clan. R’shiel and her mentor Brak are forced to call on all their godlike powers to end the conflict. Meanwhile, in the north, Tarja has recovered from injuries sustained in fighting the Kariens, and returns to guerrilla action against the invaders. In the course of healing, he has recovered from the geas that made him fall in love with R’shiel, whom he was raised to think of as his sister. Captured while trying to sabotage the ferry across the great river that divides his country, Tarja is condemned to death and taken to the Citadel in order that the Kariens can make his hanging a public example. R’shiel and Brak arrive in time to mobilize the Medalonian resistance, who free Tarja, seize the Citadel and prepare to hold out against the Kariens while awaiting reinforcements from Hythria and Fardohnya. But R’shiel still faces her greatest challenge: overcoming the Kariens’ power-hungry god Xaphista, who seeks to destroy all rival gods and subjugate all human nations under his sway. She has grown strong and confident, but killing a god may be a task beyond even her magical powers. Fallon brings her latest to a satisfying resolution, with young characters growing in response to their experience, and fantasy made credible by her realistic treatment of the details of daily life.
Well-crafted entertainment.Pub Date: July 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-765-30988-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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