Essential for students of the Old English poem—and the ideal gift for devotees of the One Ring.
Hwaet! A sparkling revisitation of Danish meadhalls and boggy monsters’ lairs by Hobbitmeister Tolkien.
Before he became world-renowned for his tales of the Shire, Tolkien (The Children of Húrin, 2007, etc.) taught Old English, Old Norse and medieval literature at Oxford. At the core of his teaching lay Beowulf, that great, exceedingly strange eighth-century poem of the eponymous, ill-fated hero and his nemesis, the unfortunate monster Grendel. His prose translation of the poem into modern English dates to 1926, and it’s a marvel of vigor and economy that doesn’t suffer from not having been set in verse. The text against which to compare it is Seamus Heaney’s 2000 verse translation, and the answer to the question of which version is essential is: Both. Here are Heaney’s closing lines, the paean to the departed hero: “They said that of all the kings upon earth / he was the man most gracious and fair-minded, / kindest to his people and keenest to win fame.” Tolkien’s are: “Thus bemourned the Geatish folk...crying that he was ever of the kings of earth of men most generous and to men most gracious, to his people most tender and for praise most eager.” Which is the more poetic rendering is a matter of taste, but Tolkien’s has the virtue of being accompanied by more than 300 pages of commentary on the poem, Anglo-Saxon society and Old English literature generally, with a bonus effort at a reconstruction of the Ur folk tale that underlies the poem. The commentary is thoroughly illuminating, touching as it does on such matters as the author’s critical attitude toward “the aristocratic class, its values and assumptions” and “the whole business of the Heathobards and their feud with the house of Healfdene.” The careful reader will also find hints between the lines of Tolkien working out bits and pieces of his own story, not least when he turns to a certain dragon, “on fire now with wrath,” and the fabulous hoard it guards while awake and asleep.
Essential for students of the Old English poem—and the ideal gift for devotees of the One Ring.Pub Date: May 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-44278-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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