A continuation—and deepening—of a saga set in the Balkans in the early modern period.
In this second volume of a sweeping trilogy of 17th-century Croatia, the arrival of a baron’s brother-in-law and his men disrupts castle life.
At the end of the first volume of Bald’s (The House of Baric Part One: Shields Down, 2015) series, Resi Kokkinos, the daughter of an Ottoman Greek merchant, had finally started to settle into life in the castle of her new husband, a young Croatian baron named Mauro Baric. She had begun to love her husband, after their dreaded arranged marriage, to learn the customs of the foreign court, and even to make some friends. At the beginning of this new volume, the serenity of the Baric castle is upended with the arrival of Resi’s brother, Patrik, and his brothers in arms. The elder generation orchestrated Resi and Mauro’s marriage to quell a family feud, but the encounter between the hotheaded Patrik and the prideful Mauro brings these buried tensions to the surface. As in Bald’s previous book, the narrative and the research go hand in hand. For instance, the appearance of Patrik’s men—who hail from as far afield as Denmark and Persia—serves as an opportunity to highlight the ethnic complexity of 17th-century Europe and Croatia’s historical role as “the cross-roads of many cultures.” This middle volume is of epic proportions in and of itself. Some readers may lack the patience to wait for the tensions raised in the first pages to come to blows a full hundred pages later. Likewise, the passages devoted to things like the logistics of baking a marzipan cake will likely not satisfy those hungry for sword fights and action. But by the same token, Bald’s attention to the nuances of castle life—including the dreams and labors of servants—is laudable. And in the end, this trilogy is a grand drama. The conflicts, intrigues, and romances among the cast of characters intensify, and readers who have come this far should not only be compelled to read through to the end, but be eagerly awaiting the final installment.
A continuation—and deepening—of a saga set in the Balkans in the early modern period.Pub Date: March 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-943594-01-6
Page Count: 530
Publisher: Hillwaker Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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