The Shaggy Dog meets J.R.R. Tolkien in this entertaining debut effort from San Francisco Chronicle reporter Carroll. The premise is wildly silly and metaphorically transparent, and has absolutely no right to succeed on any level, but Carroll—through a combination of reasonably swift pacing and gruffly funny internal monologues—pulls it off. It's like this: Bill ``Bogey'' Ingersol, a corporate-takeover maven with a killer instinct, has run afoul of the SEC; but before he can get sent to the clink, he's sucked into an alternate universe, where he discovers that he's been transformed into a very big dog. The Wall Street predator suddenly becomes a real one, snacking on whatever he can scare up in the forest, spending a fair chunk of the novel's early pages fleeing a passel of assorted otherworldly monsters. Everything looks vaguely Middle Ages, right down to the rustic peasant whom Ingersol eventually hooks up with. From a wicked wizard named Zalthazar, Ingersol learns that humans—Two Legs to the animal kingdom—were the victors in a struggle against the infinitely evil Mogwert, mainly because the Mogwert were inflexible in their battle tactics. Hence the arrival of Ingersol, claimed from the combative world of high finance to show the Mogwert how to triumph in the upcoming Final Battle with the Two Legs, who've become complacent in the ``Fair Lands.'' Ingersol, however, is completely repulsed by the dark plan and agrees to act as a double-agent for the humans, a mission that leads him to run-ins with some of the more alarming horrors of the universe. Interspersed with these high-jinks are Ingersol's recollections of his parallel life in New York, where his human form lies in a deep sleep. The Devil himself shows up eventually, and Ingersol finds himself awkwardly in charge of forces much darker than venture capitalism. A whole new chapter in the fantasy genre.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-441-00368-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1996
An enjoyable, worthwhile end to an immersive series.
Cerúlia takes back her throne, but her troubles are just beginning in Kozloff’s (A Broken Queen, 2020, etc.) fourth and final Four Realms novel.
It only takes five chapters for Cerúlia to successfully overthrow Matwyck and take her throne. At first it feels a bit pat for a four-book series to resolve its main plotline so early in its final volume, but it turns out there’s more to successfully ruling a kingdom than putting a crown on your head. Queen Cerúlia has to root out the network of people who supported Matwyck’s coup; she must discern which people genuinely wish to serve her and which are liars waiting to end her reign before it gets going. What’s more, she must address political issues like the growing resentment among the common people toward the aristocracy and deal with thorny issues of international diplomacy. All the while, she has to figure out how to finally be herself when she was forced to spend almost her entire life pretending she was not the rightful queen. Kozloff has great instincts when it comes to pacing, and the novel flies by with a good mix of action sequences and emotional, character-developing beats. Her villains are never one-note, and her heroes are complicated and fallible. Still, it all starts to feel a little paint-by-number. It’s not that there are never any consequences or losses, but eventually it feels a bit too certain that Cerúlia will get it right and things will go her way. Even so, the series ender is just as much fun as the rest of the books.
An enjoyable, worthwhile end to an immersive series.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-16896-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
The narrator is researching for his book, The Day the World Ended, when he comes up against his karass, as he later understands it through Bokononism. It leads him to investigate Dr. Hoenniker, "Father of the A-Bomb," whom his son Little Newt says was playing cat's cradle when the bomb dropped (people weren't his specialty). The good doctor left his children an even greater weapon of devastation in ice-nine, an inheritance which won his ugly daughter a handsome husband; little Newt, a Russian midget just his size for an affair that ended when she absconded with a sliver of ice-nine; and made unlikely Franklin the right hand man of Papa Monzano of San Lorenzo, a make-believe Caribbean republic. On the trail of ice-nine, the narrator comes in for Papa's death and is tapped for the Presidency of San Lorenzo. Lured by sex symbol Mona, he accepts, but before he can take office, ice-nine breaks loose, freezing land and sea. Bokonon, the aged existentialist residing in the jungle as counter to the strong man, formulates a religion that makes up for life altogether: since the natives are miserable and there is little hope for changing their lot, he takes advantage of the release of ice-nine to bring them a happy death. The narrator's karass is at last made clear by Bokonon himself, leaving him to commit a final blasphemy against whoever is up there. A riddle on the meaning of meaninglessness or vice versa in a devastation-oriented era, with science-fiction figures on the prowl and political-ologies lanced. Spottily effective.
Pub Date: March 18, 1963
ISBN: 038533348X
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1963
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