Although the pace is fast and frenetic, the characters are little more than polemic place-markers, and the language is...
TV writer turned novelist Pasha offers this miniseries-ready recapitulation of the Third Crusade.
Saladin, a charismatic sultan of humble Kurdish origins, succeeds in the nearly impossible task of driving out the Christian Franks from Jerusalem, where they have ruled for decades after conquering the city with their trademark ferocious barbarity. Saladin manages to beat the Christians back to a small coastal encampment, where he keeps them contained. Back in England, young king Richard the Lionheart vows to retake Jerusalem for the Cross and for his own self-aggrandizement. Richard, a ruthless warrior still battling rumors that he is homosexual, is a virulent anti-Semite and shows no compunction about slaughtering women and children in the course of his campaigns. Maimonides, rabbi, physician and renowned author of religious and philosophical treatises, serves as Saladin’s doctor and most trusted confidant. Maimonides’ niece Miriam has been his ward ever since she narrowly escaped death at the hands of brutal Frankish marquis Conrad, who, years before, brutally raped and killed her mother before her eyes. Conrad is now the leader of the small group of Christians encamped on the coast—once Richard helps him retake Jerusalem, he expects to rule that city. Lovely, green-eyed and erudite, Miriam captivates Saladin, and the infatuation is mutual. After their affair is exposed, Miriam, on her way to sanctuary in Egypt, is captured by the Franks. Stung by Richard’s contempt, Conrad defects to Saladin. Maimonides is alarmed when he recognizes, in Conrad’s possession, an amulet which belonged to Rachel, Miriam’s mother. Realizing that Conrad murdered Rachel, Maimonides hatches a plot to kill the marquis and implicate Richard in his death. Meanwhile, Miriam unwillingly becomes Richard’s mistress in order to spy for the Saracens. Ultimately the love that both Richard and Saladin have for Miriam will force them into an unlikely decision about the fate of Jerusalem.
Although the pace is fast and frenetic, the characters are little more than polemic place-markers, and the language is jarringly clichéd and anachronistic.Pub Date: June 22, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4165-7995-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2010
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 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.
