One superman’s bloody battles with negative power run amok.
Beneath the gore of Nolan’s first novel lies a morality play in which a shaman passes along 1,200 years worth of life lessons to his successor through a gruesome fight that only one can survive.
Young Pico becomes an immortal superhuman, and he must choose good or evil as his driving force. This moral choice is also a physical one, because he was made immortal by the magic of the wellsprings. Its power comes with an insatiable addiction that can be fed only by blood and mastered only by supreme mental control. Pico learns the necessary skills through the teachings of his mentor, Kani, first in person, then by written legacy, then through harsh experience on his own. His story is a tour of violence across an Earth-like planet peopled with familiar archetypes—early Native Americans, Celts, Christians—altered to fit that world’s supernatural conditions. Everyone is fodder for the predatory Sachems, an immortal race fueled by the wellsprings. Pico becomes the strongest of them, and must either emulate Kani and control his addiction so he can foster the world or succumb and consume the population. Either way, he must conquer his nemesis, Enos. Once Kani’s friend, Enos chose the dark path while Kani chose the light, and only one of them can remain. Nolan tells their story in a dispassionate narrative with revolving viewpoints. Although engaging, the book comes across like a flat horror novel, because the characters react shallowly, if at all, to continual—and often extreme—brutality. Squeamish readers may need to skim in order to follow the plot without being revolted by some descriptions. And technically picky readers will stumble on consistent misuse of “lie” for “lay” and canoe paddles referred to as oars. Fantasy fans will appreciate the heroic-quest flavor and credible worldbuilding. Anyone romantically inclined, however, will want to hear about the positive-energy wellsprings instead of just the negative ones. Given that the book may launch a series, stories about positive wellsprings may emerge.
One superman’s bloody battles with negative power run amok.Pub Date: Dec. 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-0615554150
Page Count: 158
Publisher: ICURYY, LLC
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.
A forsaken family bound by grief still struggles to pick up the pieces 12 years after their mother’s death.
When famous author Gil Coleman sees “his dead wife standing on the pavement below” from a bookshop window in a small town on the southern coast of England, he follows her, but to no avail, and takes a near-fatal fall off a walkway on the beach. As soon as they hear word of his accident, Gil’s grown daughters, Nan and Flora, drop everything and return to their seaside family home in Spanish Green. Though her father’s health is dire, Flora, Gil’s youngest, can’t help but be consumed by the thought that her mother, Ingrid—who went missing and presumably drowned (though the body was never found) off the coast more than a decade ago—could be alive, wandering the streets of their town. British author Fuller’s second novel (Our Endless Numbered Days, 2015) is nimbly told from two alternating perspectives: Flora’s, as she re-evaluates the loose ends of her mother’s ambiguous disappearance; and Ingrid’s, through a series of candid letters she writes, but never delivers, to Gil in the month leading up to the day she vanishes. The most compelling parts of this novel unfold in Ingrid’s letters, in which she chronicles the dissolution of her 16-year marriage to Gil, beginning when they first meet in 1976: Gil is her alluring professor, they engage in a furtive love affair, and fall into a hasty union precipitated by an unexpected pregnancy; Gil gains literary fame, and Ingrid is left to tackle motherhood alone (including two miscarriages); and it all bitterly culminates in the discovery of an irrevocable betrayal. Unbeknownst to Gil and his daughters, these letters remain hidden, neglected, in troves of books throughout the house, and the truth lies seductively within reach. Fuller’s tale is eloquent, harrowing, and raw, but it’s often muddled by tired, cloying dialogue. And whereas Ingrid shines as a protagonist at large, the supporting characters are lacking in depth.
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-941040-51-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
The fine Israeli writer Yehoshua (Open Heart, 1996, etc.) makes a lengthy journey into the year 999, the end of the first millennium. Indeed, it is the idea of a great journey that is the heart of the story here. Ben Attar, a Moroccan Jewish merchant has come a long distance to France to seek out his nephew and former partner Abulafia. Ben Attar, the nephew, and a third partner, the Muslim Abu Lutfi, had once done a lucrative business importing spices and treasures from the Atlas Mountains to eager buyers in medieval Europe. But now their partnership has been threatened by a complex series of events, with Abulafia married to a pious Jewish widow who objects vehemently to Ben Attar’s two wives. Accompanied by a Spanish rabbi, whose cleverness is belied by his seeming ineffectualness; the rabbi’s young son, Abu Lutfi; the two wives; a timorous black slave boy, and a crew of Arab sailors, the merchant has come to Europe to fight for his former partnership. The battle takes place in two makeshift courtrooms in the isolated Jewish communities of the French countryside, in scenes depicted with extraordinary vividness. Yehoshua tells this complex, densely layered story of love, sexuality, betrayal and “the twilight days, [when] faiths [are] sharpened in the join between one millennium and the next” in a richly allusive, languorous prose, full of lengthy, packed sentences, with clauses tumbling one after another. De Lange’s translation is sensitively nuanced and elegant, catching the strangely hypnotic rhythms of Yehoshua’s style. As the story draws toward its tragic conclusion—but not the one you might expect—the effect is moving, subtle, at once both cerebral and emotional. One of Yehoshua’s most fully realized works: a masterpiece.
Pub Date: Jan. 19, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-48882-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1998
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