Whether interested in the history of the Middle Ages or just looking for a thrilling tale of knights, warfare, romance, and...
Prepare to have your buckles swashed: in the tradition of Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, this historical fiction depicts the people and events leading to the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Damsels, Druids, Kelts, Vikings, mysterious knights-errant, jousts, mighty steeds, and chivalry are all part of this thoroughly enjoyable, well-written historical novel. Vint (The Brothers Reno, 2014, etc.) breathes life into history with beautifully drawn characters and nonstop action. Readers first meet Harold Godwinson, in line for the Anglish (English) crown when he survives a shipwreck and is taken for ransom by Count Guy from Normandy. Guy’s cousin is William the Conqueror, a man who trusts no one, particularly relatives. After William relieves Guy of Harold, a medieval bromance ensues in which William learns to trust and Harold, who until then was a womanizing, carousing loner, falls for William’s daughter, Adelize. As friendship grows between the two nobles and love blossoms between Harold and Adelize, William offers to build a castle for the lovers, but Harold wonders if he is truly a guest or just a pampered prisoner. Before leaving for England, Harold is tricked into taking a loyalty oath to William. On returning home, Harold is chosen by the dying King Edward to be the next king, despite Harold’s son Tostig being next in line. Meanwhile, William feels betrayed by Harold and plots his invasion. Tostig, who escapes after an unsuccessful attempt on Harold’s life, tries first to side with William, then with Haarald Hardrada, the Viking king of Norway, and the rest, quite literally, is history. The final Battle of Hastings scene is long, detailed, and exciting, with pageantlike sideshows of personal duels and jousts. Well-rounded, detailed characterizations of the main players are offset somewhat by the bad guys like Tostig, who tend to be sniveling, traitorous foils.
Whether interested in the history of the Middle Ages or just looking for a thrilling tale of knights, warfare, romance, and intrigue, readers can’t go wrong with this one.Pub Date: April 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5075-2413-8
Page Count: 328
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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