There’s still more talk than action, but enough happens that the end result is a satisfying conclusion, with room for more...
Walton continues her tale of the goddess Athene’s experiment to establish a city based on the principles of Plato’s Republic, inhabited by stray scholars and former child-slaves harvested from various time periods.
Twenty years after the events of The Just City (2014), the original city has splintered into five, each convinced that it's following the correct philosophical path. But instead of the enlightened rule Plato dreamed of, there are petty squabbles and thefts of the art Athene looted from the dark corners of history. When Simmea, the aspiring philosopher who was such a sympathetic narrator in the previous volume, is killed during one of these art raids, her husband, Pytheas (aka Apollo in human form), swears vengeance, believing the perpetrator to be Kebes, Simmea’s jealous former suitor who sailed off to parts unknown. So Pytheas, his children (including his daughter by Simmea, Arete), and a small crew take their one remaining ship on a voyage of exploration. Along the way, they discover the fate of Kebes, and Pytheas’ children learn what it truly means to be the children of a god, just as Pytheas begins to understand what it means to be human. The Just City seemed more thought experiment than novel, practically checking off points in a philosophy lecture. But Walton is more audacious here, launching into her own territory; the plotting and characterization are richer in what begins as a fantasy and then, just at the end, abruptly and intriguingly veers into science fiction. While Kebes remains something of a one-dimensional villain, Ikaros/Giovanni Pico della Mirandola becomes more than the arrogantly oblivious rapist he is in Book 1, and living with and grieving for Simmea has seriously chipped away at Pytheas’ hubris.
There’s still more talk than action, but enough happens that the end result is a satisfying conclusion, with room for more if desired.Pub Date: June 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3267-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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