An original and highly immersive introduction to an intriguing fantasy world.
A prostitute and a runaway slave team up to escape a world destabilized by exploitative mining and labor practices in this debut novel.
In the city of New Dera on an alternative Earth, the former knight-turned-prostitute Ava Sandrino comes home one evening to find a wraith—a super-strong, horned humanoid who does not eat or feel cold—hiding there. He is called Sariel, and he has just escaped the inhumane conditions of the mines, where the mysterious element brimstone is pulled from the ground and shipped to the workshops of the Empire’s alchemists. Ava agrees to shelter the fugitive slave from those pursuing him—she feels strangely attracted to him, after all. Sariel is trying to reach the land beyond the Northern Dark: a separate world safe from the powers that rule this one. But to get there, Sariel will have to travel through lands controlled by geomancers and the feared, faceless One O’Clock King, who guards the path beyond their world. After arranging passage for Sariel with an old friend and finding herself on the wrong side of the law, Ava becomes separated from the wraith. But the more she learns about Sariel’s mysterious past, the more it begins to sound like getting out of New Dera may be a good idea for both of them. In this series opener, Rosenberg’s prose is gritty and sharp, combing elements of sword-and-sorcery and urban fantasy with a stylish cyberpunk energy. She excels at worldbuilding, giving readers just enough to provoke more questions about the larger universe of the story: “As she washed, paint filled the tub in rivers of purple and green. October was the month of Halfa. The avenues outside blazed with checkered lanterns, hung in honor of the bull and his silver hoard. They worshipped him with sex and wine and reams of paper money.” The book contains some clever corollaries regarding geopolitics and climate change denial, but the novel is too short and fast paced to get into the weeds about anything. The next volume in the series should be awaited with anticipation by readers.
An original and highly immersive introduction to an intriguing fantasy world.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-951490-07-2
Page Count: 164
Publisher: DartFrog Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
