Fantasy regulars looking for a fresh series with real bite should find it worth a try.
The kickoff of a new fantasy series from the author of The Vacant Throne (2008, etc.).
Erenthrall is a city powered by magic channeled through a web of ley lines whose focus is the Nexus. Baron Arent Pallentor rules the city and controls the surrounding baronies by intimidation and his mastery of the ley system via the Wielders and the elite Primes, among whom Prime Wielder Augustus, like the baron himself, achieves near-immortality by bathing in the magic of the ley. The Baron orders the creation of extensions to his power at whim—new buildings, flying machines and other devices brought about by means of the ley’s magic. But a rebel group calling itself the Kormanley considers this a perversion of the natural order and seeks to oppose him. One faction of the Kormanley, losing patience with slow persuasion, turns to violence, becoming in effect a terrorist group. Allan Garrett, an ambitious member of the Baron’s SS-like Dogs, cannot prevent his wife’s death by one of the Kormanley’s bombs, and he deserts—but not before discovering he has the unconscious ability to suppress the effects of the ley’s magic. Kara Tremain, a young Wielder fast tracked as a future Prime, witnesses her parents’ deaths in another terrorist incident and becomes determined to help stamp the perpetrators out. What nobody yet grasps is that the appearance of “distortions,” weird and deadly space-time warps that appear at random to shred people and swallow buildings, has its direct cause in the stresses imposed on the ley. Magic operating along scientifically testable principles: Palmatier exploits an active imagination to good effect, with characters who develop along with the story—the first 200 pages, however, could have been condensed into 20—with plenty of tension and excitement.
Fantasy regulars looking for a fresh series with real bite should find it worth a try.Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7564-0919-7
Page Count: 736
Publisher: DAW/Berkley
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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