Impressive research lends flintiness to a work that holds up well indeed to Jean Auel's Earth's Children trilogy.
Is there any shaman-reviewer with magic strong enough to lay claws on this first novel about Hell Beast and Ka, Kane and Eran, Agon and Eena and Sagon and Elina—figures whose spirit-song whistles through an epic set 30,000 years ago, when all existence was a snake pit of souls writhing in rock and water, axe and lightning bolt?
Prehistorian Dann's cave-dwelling lovers, Agon and Eena, are Cro-Magnons whom he sees as "modern-looking" and imbued with all the emotional qualities of humans today. They're tremendously spiritual, too, reading signs of spirit-life wherever they look. Dann's folk live in Eurasia during an interglacial period when great rivers race everywhere, helping account for frequent avalanches and monstrously frenzied storms, including massive lightning bolts that can explode trees, crack rock, and split open mountains should the plot call for it. When Eena first meets Agon, a bison-hunt leader, she sees that "he moved with the strength of a young lion, his magic so strong it radiated from him like heat from a fire." As time passes, Eena, abrim with her own magic tie to Mother Earth, earns the title of Spear Woman and Agon that of Axe Man. His amazing axe—an antler handle with head bound by thongs—whirls so fast that it sings as it disappears when thrown toward a victim. Agon's axe song alone can fight the vicious spearmen of the tribe of invaders led by Ka, a shaman who is evil incarnate. When Ka destroys Agon's tribe and snatches off Eena, Agon must pursue the demon to recover his pregnant beloved. Then a falling star blots out the sun—for how long? Agon at last becomes a titanic figure, feared by enemies bent on murdering him, even his own son Eran.
Impressive research lends flintiness to a work that holds up well indeed to Jean Auel's Earth's Children trilogy.Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-86984-3
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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