A complex opening to a fantasy series that’s slow getting to its feet.
In this historical fantasy, a young man learns of his parents’ fates and commits to an arduous path of vengeance.
In the 602nd year since the fall of the Dragon Empire, in the kingdom of Khetar, 8-year-old Joren lives with his aunt, Syara. She’s the crone (“Nurse, midwife, herbalist and matchmaker”) in the village of Nesa, and she guides the precocious boy, who has no memories from before his arrival in Khetar. As the years roll by, the ruthless Empire of the White Sun goes to war against nearby Thrace. One day, Joren witnesses seven darklings—reclusive members of the fairy (“sidhe”) races—traveling by daylight, wounded and frightened. One whispers to the boy, “We know thee, Queen’s Heir.” After Syara expends quite a bit of her vitality to heal them, Joren begins training with a spear under fighting master Korsul Two-Spear. He also learns from Ajax Whitebeard, a swordsman in service to Wurrunk, the god of war and death. Eventually, Joren learns that his father was Danu Queen’s Sword, who was killed by members of a werewolf tribe called the Lupaku, and that he’s the last of the Mabirshar royal line. With war rumbling beyond Nesa, he must “walk the Path of Kings” to keep his lineage alive. In this densely rendered debut, Boyle brings forbidding magical touches to an early Byzantine-era setting. He begins with a lively, extended prologue in which soldier Othar Inkson meets Danu, who’s just been mortally wounded. From there, Joren’s tale builds from a framing sequence in which he looks back on his life. His narration has a wandering quality that leaves room for lots of rich historical background regarding the region and its peoples but also includes personal commentaries. For instance, he discusses his love, Bel Karra, whose laugh “was like a musical spell,” saying further that, “I am loth to share these memories, even with you,” the reader. Those expecting a fast-paced action-fantasy may have difficulty with Boyle’s love of thick cultural textures. However, fans of the novel’s funereal atmospherics and stately cadence will return for the sequel.
A complex opening to a fantasy series that’s slow getting to its feet.Pub Date: May 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5328-2545-3
Page Count: 396
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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