Pounce on this one.
Alternate-world fantasy from the talented and versatile author of End of the World Blues (2007), wherein Marco Polo's family founded the dynasty that rules Venice.
In the early 15th century, Venice is powerful but must play her enemies—Ottomans, Byzantines, Germans, etc.—off against one another. Alonzo, the idiot Duke Marco's uncle, rules as Regent, his authority enforced by a cadre of assassins and the mage-alchemist Hightown Crow, while Alexa, Alonzo's sister-in-law, and her witch A'rial keep Alonzo in check. Alonzo has arranged for Marco's cousin Giulietta to marry Janus, the king of Cyprus, ostensibly as an alliance against the Turks. However, Alonzo's real plan involves arranging for Giulietta to be impregnated; she has been ordered, following the birth, to poison Janus and his relatives. So when Giulietta goes missing, Alonzo spares no effort to find her. In the hold of one ship, Alonzo's guards find a naked boy chained to the bulkhead. Eerily beautiful and unnaturally strong, Tycho escapes as soon as he's brought on deck. Later, Atilo il Mauros, the duke’s master of assassins, comes upon Tycho sipping blood from a murder victim. Tycho evades Atilo's men and escapes with astonishing speed. Since the assassins' ranks were recently decimated in battle with werewolves secretly led by Prince Leopold, the bastard son of the German emperor, the aging Atilo knows he must find the boy and bind him as his apprentice. Grimwood adroitly combines a satisfying complexity with visceral detail and bouts of astounding violence, knit together by suitably Machiavellian intrigue.
Pounce on this one.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-316-07439-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
As in Resurrection (1966) and The Wreckage of Agathon (1970) Gardner demonstrates his agility at juggling metaphysical notions while telling a diverting tale. Here he has used as a means of discovering man's unsavory ways that muzziest of monsters, Grendel, from the Beowulf chronicle. As in the original, Grendel is a bewildering combination of amorphous threats and grisly specifics — he bellows in the wilds and crunches through hapless inhabitants of the meadhall. But Grendel, the essence of primal violence, is also a learning creature. Itc listens to a wheezing bore with scales and coils, a pedantic Lucifer, declaim on the relentless complexity of cosmic accident. He hears an old priest put in a word for God as unity of discords, where nothing is lost. And Grendel continues to observe the illusions of bards, kings, heroes, and soldiers, occasionally eating one. After the true hero arrives sprouting fiery wings, to deal the death blow, he shows Grendel the reality of both destruction and rebirth. Throughout the trackless philosophic speculation, the dialogue is witty and often has a highly contemporary tilt: "The whole shit-ass scene was his idea, not mine," says Grendel, disgusted by a sacrificial hero. At the close one is not sure if the savior is "blithe of his deed," but Gardner, the word-pleaser, should be.
Pub Date: Sept. 17, 1971
ISBN: 0679723110
Page Count: 186
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1971
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