Gwynne’s effort pales in comparison to George R.R. Martin’s gold-standard work, but it’s nothing bad; the story grinds to a...
A middling Middle Earth–ish extravaganza with all the usual thrills, chills, spills and frills.
All modern fantasy begins with J.R.R. Tolkien, and Tolkien begins with the Icelandic sagas and the Mabinogion. Debut author Gwynne’s overstuffed but slow-moving contribution to the genre—the first in a series, of course—wears the latter source on its sleeve: “Fionn ap Toin, Marrock ben Rhagor, why do you come here on this first day of the Birth Moon?” Why, indeed? Well, therein hangs the tale. The protagonist is a 14-year-old commoner named Corban, son of a swineherd, who, as happens in such things, turns out to be more resourceful than his porcine-production background might suggest. There are bad doings afoot in Tintagel—beg pardon, the Banished Lands—where nobles plot against nobles even as there are stirrings of renewed titanomachia, that war between giants and humans having given the place some of its gloominess. There’s treachery aplenty, peppered with odd episodes inspired by other sources, such as an Androcles-and-lion moment in which Corban rescues a fierce wolven (“rarely seen here, preferring the south of Ardan, regions of deep forest and sweeping moors, where the auroch herds roamed”). It’s a good move: You never can tell when a wolven ally will come in handy, especially when there are wyrms around.
Gwynne’s effort pales in comparison to George R.R. Martin’s gold-standard work, but it’s nothing bad; the story grinds to a halt at points, but at others, there’s plenty of action.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-39973-9
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
Second entry in Hobb's fantasy series about the Six Duchies and their Farseer kings (Assassin's Apprentice, 1995). At Buckkeep, King Shrewd lies dying, attended only the by the faithful, enigmatic Fool; King in Waiting Verity spends all his time Skilling to befuddle and bemuse the dreaded Red Ship Raiders, while his beautiful, neglected wife, Kettricken, wanders disconsolately. Young FitzChivalry, still ailing after his previous mission, tries to serve both Shrewd and Verity while seeking ways to frustrate the vaulting ambitions of Shrewd's youngest son, the viperous Prince Regal. Shrewd, meantime, has forbidden poor Fitz to marry his beloved Molly, a commoner. Fitz also possesses the Wit, an ability to talk to and empathize with animals, and he bonds with a young wolf he rescues from cruel captivity. Verity builds his own warships, but still can't defeat the Raiders—and the weaker Verity grows, the more the people listen to Regal's treacherous murmurings. Finally, Verity goes into the mountains seeking the Elderlings, a godlike race that helped a previous Farseer king to defeat the Raiders, leaving Fitz to protect Kettricken and Shrewd. Another spellbinding installment, built of patient detail, believable characters, and mature plotting—though, at an unwarranted 608 pages, there are ominous signs that Hobb's beginning to lose control of her narrative.
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-553-37563-6
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
Two lessons: Don’t discount a woman just because she’s made of clay, and consider your wishes carefully should you find that...
Can’t we all just get along? Perhaps yes, if we’re supernatural beings from one side or another of the Jewish-Arab divide.
In her debut novel, Wecker begins with a juicy premise: At the dawn of the 20th century, the shtetls of Europe and half of “Greater Syria” are emptying out, their residents bound for New York or Chicago or Detroit. One aspirant, “a Prussian Jew from Konin, a bustling town to the south of Danzig,” is an unpleasant sort, a bit of a bully, arrogant, unattractive, but with enough loose gelt in his pocket to commission a rabbi-without-a-portfolio to build him an idol with feet of clay—and everything else of clay, too. The rabbi, Shaalman, warns that the ensuing golem—in Wecker’s tale, The Golem—is meant to be a slave and “not for the pleasures of a bed,” but he creates her anyway. She lands in Manhattan with less destructive force than Godzilla hit Tokyo, but even so, she cuts a strange figure. So does Ahmad, another slave bottled up—literally—and shipped across the water to a New York slum called Little Syria, where a lucky Lebanese tinsmith named Boutros Arbeely rubs a magic flask in just the right way and—shazam!—the jinni (genie) appears. Ahmad is generally ticked off by events, while The Golem is burdened with the “instinct to be of use.” Naturally, their paths cross, the most unnatural of the unnaturalized citizens of Lower Manhattan—and great adventures ensue, for Shaalman is in the wings, as is a shadowy character who means no good when he catches wind of the supernatural powers to be harnessed. Wecker takes the premise and runs with it, and though her story runs on too long for what is in essence a fairy tale, she writes skillfully, nicely evoking the layers of alienness that fall upon strangers in a strange land.
Two lessons: Don’t discount a woman just because she’s made of clay, and consider your wishes carefully should you find that magic lamp.Pub Date: April 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-211083-1
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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