Grimsley's backdrop's and quantum-magic ideas are deeply considered and impressively detailed, but the rest is obvious,...
Fantasy from the southern playwright and author of Comfort and Joy (1999), etc. Blue Queen Athryn Ardfalla, refusing to yield her throne to the Red King, Kirith Kirin, as tradition and law demand, has allied herself with an evil wizard, Drudaen Keerfax, and has grievously oppressed the people. Kirith Kirin, keeping to the forest of Arthen where the queen cannot go, plots to remedy the situation. His seer, Mordwen, in response to a prophecy, sends for young sheepherder Jessex to tend the lamps at the forest's shrine. But Jessex, the son and grandson of witches, has more talents than are apparent. Three weird sisters—the Fates, in effect—spirit him away to a magical lake, where they teach him magic in a sort of time warp. Then Jessex learns that the queen's witch, Julassa, has killed his family and captured his mother. Kirith Kirin, meanwhile, falls in love with Jessex. Constrained by the sisters never to use his magic, Jessex progresses rapidly, resisting Drudaen's blandishments—until Julassa threatens to annihilate Kirith Kirin and his armies in battle. Jessex kills Julassa, but the sisters agree that this too is part of his development, while they wait for a major-league wizard, Yron, to show up. Finally, the war of liberation gets going and Jessex realizes who he really is.
Grimsley's backdrop's and quantum-magic ideas are deeply considered and impressively detailed, but the rest is obvious, overly familiar, and weighs a ton.Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-892065-16-9
Page Count: 456
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
There are few surprises, but it’s still satisfying to travel with these characters toward their more-than-well-earned happy...
The witch Diana’s and the vampire Matthew’s quests to discover their origins and confront the threats to their star-crossed union tie up as neatly as one of Diana’s magical weaver’s knots.
In the resolution of the All Souls trilogy, Diana’s impossible pregnancy with Matthew’s twins advances as various forces seek the couple’s separation, their destruction or both, mainly due to the covenant against liaisons across supernatural species lines. While Matthew searches for genetic answers to how he and Diana could be cross-fertile and what that will mean for their children, Diana seeks magical revelations from the missing Ashmole 782 manuscript, the fabled Book of Life. Figures from their pasts also resurface, injecting additional danger and urgency into their search. The novel lacks the sweep of the previous book (Shadow of Night, 2012), which offered a vivid immersion into the daily life and court intrigue of late 16th-century London and Prague. But, as in the previous two installments, there are healthy doses of action, colorful magic, angst-y romance and emotional epiphany, plus mansion-hopping across the globe, historical tidbits and name-dropping of famous artworks and manuscripts.
There are few surprises, but it’s still satisfying to travel with these characters toward their more-than-well-earned happy ending.Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-670-02559-6
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
PROFILES
Then comes the fire storm and "It is so short and jumbled and jangled" . . . because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre but it is precise jumble and jangle, disconcerting and ultimately devastating.
Pub Date: March 21, 1969
ISBN: 0385312083
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1969
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