Short story writer Bird (Nightmare and Nostalgia, 2013) offers five tales of the fantastic, most involving haunted (or haunting) females.
The author makes ghost stories her specialty in this collection, and hers are of an especially gentle variety, grounded more in emotion than horror, with very few things likely to say “boo.” However, it’s not the sole genre in her repertoire. In the title tale, Holy Innocents is a Catholic convent/orphanage in Cincinnati, taking in children during the depths of the Depression as a flu epidemic ravages the city. The narrator, Agnes, lovingly looks after one newcomer, Lizzie, but seems to never interact with the other nuns or children. (Readers get one guess at the benevolent Agnes’ true nature.) Bird distinguishes her tales with pleasing, well-chosen language, and the second, “Magnetic Attraction,” is a standout: an imagining of the fractured family relationships of scientist-spouses Marie and Pierre that uses wordplay and terminology derived from physics and chemistry (although it’s set during a séance, naturally). “A Serpent in Paradise” is the lone sci-fi entry and also the only one from a male point of view. In it, a developer despoiling Brazilian rain forests encounters a fungus that normally infects ants and alters their behavior; now, however, it’s aiming higher up the food chain. In “Monster,” the spirit of a dancer resents her early death and forcibly and grotesquely reincarnates itself in a random woman, resulting in a medical anomaly. The closer, “Walk-In,” describes an eager ghost possessing a willing host—a mentally unstable wife and mother. Readers can finish this collection in the time it takes to watch a Creepshow-style horror-film anthology. The tales don’t have that movie’s gore, but they do offer consistency, intelligence and a few haunting notions.
An offbeat set of horror stories that impart subtle, rather than raw, shocks.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499182101
Page Count: 88
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: PARANORMAL FICTION
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With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
19
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Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | FANTASY | PARANORMAL FICTION | EPIC FANTASY | PARANORMAL FANTASY
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