A rip-roaring, if sometimes overly obscure, wartime tale.
A fantastical historical novel set during World War II.
Warner follows up his previous work, Little Anton (2019), with a new story of wartime escapades. The action begins in Washington, D.C., in 1942, and President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill have a lot on their plates. Nazi Gen. Erwin Rommel’s tank battalions may soon threaten the Suez Canal in North Africa; there’s all sorts of “whiz-bang science in the works” throughout the world, and something strange that happened in the air over Los Angeles recently may have involved “non-Earthly and therefore interplanetary” aircraft. Leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt may be “top-shelf Freemasons,” as the latter puts it, but it doesn’t mean they know everything that’s going on. That’s where secret agents like Bernie Rodgers come in. Bernie, a self-proclaimed “switch-hitting mystic gadfly,” is a peppy American who’s as much at home extracting information from Rudolf Hess as he is breaking up an occult blood-drinking ceremony in Portugal. He’s sent to investigate what the Germans may be up to in remote locations such as Iraq and Antarctica. Along the way, Bernie’s companions include a Malian sergeant named Gwafa, an unflappable adventurer named Alice (“as in Wonderland”), and Churchill’s own “hard-drinking, randy, always-on-report, irreverent Godless libertine” grandniece, Bea. Bea and Gwafa met behind enemy lines in Egypt, where they managed not only to survive, but also commandeer a Porsche Tiger Panzer VK 45.01P tank. Little did they realize their ordeal in the desert was merely the beginning of their adventure.
This wild story of wartime interests only manages to get wilder as it goes on. Everything from occultist Aleister Crowley to Atlantean technology manages to play a role in this free-roaming tale, which goes far beyond what one might find in standard history books. Whether the reader buys into certain ideas, such as that ancient Egyptian pyramids were actually used as power stations, the narrative as a whole offers them much to consider—and it does so in a rapid-fire fashion. No sooner are Bea and Gwafa rescued (after nearly being executed) by a British desert raid and reconnaissance group than events turn to scenes in a remarkably comfortable Cairo, followed by a crash course in anti-gravity and propulsion. Some bits of the story feel a little slapdash, however, as in a lengthy discussion that includes a casual mention of how the night sky once held an artificial crystal moon, without any elaboration. For those who are unversed in such esoteric beliefs, some of the book’s conversations can be perplexing; for instance, what are the “Thule, Vril, and Ahnenerbe societies”? Still, such material is successfully held together by scenes of action. The book also offers plenty of tidbits to keeps readers’ interest, thanks in part to the constant presence of real historical figures in the narrative, such as German explorer Ernst Schäfer and U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Rico Botta, about whom, oddly enough, the author says he could find little historical information.
A rip-roaring, if sometimes overly obscure, wartime tale.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73419-357-2
Page Count: 428
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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