While some sentiments are obvious, this supernatural tale ventures to unexpected places.
A sequel focuses on a small town and a secret place in the Great Smoky Mountains.
Book Two of this series sees Kyle and Wren Makepeace walking out of the wilds of Unaka Mountain. In Legend of Lovada Branch: Book One: The Cove (2019), the two learned a lot about themselves, thanks to a society that manages to conceal and sustain itself far away from outsiders. As Wren, who was adopted as a child, points out, “For the first time I know who I am.” Meanwhile, Kyle must come to terms with his own past and true purpose. But all is not well in the couple’s small town. For starters, the pair must explain the death of a relative named Porter. Porter met his end in Book One and, as this sequel begins, it is still not public knowledge. Once the death is disclosed, Porter’s children do not take kindly to the news. And it is certainly a shock for Porter’s mostly passive wife, Vestie. The town’s citizens are also upset by another change in their lives: the new population of migrant Hispanic workers. Though some welcome the laborers, even offering to help them learn about the United States, others are less inclined toward hospitality. Part small-town drama, part mystical experience, Karen Karper Fredette’s sequel creates a vivid portrait of a place in America with an element of the supernatural. (The novel includes black-and-white illustrations by Paul A. Fredette, the author’s husband.) While some of the country people may talk as if they stumbled out of an old Western (As one man points out, “A feller don’t git dirt under his fingernails at a whore house”), there is no telling what otherworldliness may lurk in the woods. As Wren seeks to guide Vestie on a journey of self-exploration, there are many intriguing details for her to uncover. But several resulting observations are exactly what one might expect. Wren goes so far as to declare, after hearing about Vestie’s ability at one time to make money singing old ballads, “That must have been so grand for you, Vestie!” Still, with so much commotion in such a small place, readers cannot be sure how things will turn out. This is, after all, a town where a most unusual settlement lies just up in the mountains.
While some sentiments are obvious, this supernatural tale ventures to unexpected places.Pub Date: May 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-09-052572-7
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.
In this long-awaited fifth installment of Shannon’s Bone Season series, the threat to the clairvoyant community spreads like a plague across Europe.
After extending her fight against the Republic of Scion to Paris, Paige Mahoney, leader of London’s clairvoyant underworld and a spy for the resistance movement, finds herself further outside her comfort zone when she wakes up in a foreign place with no recollection of getting there. More disturbing than her last definitive memory, in which her ally-turned-lover Arcturus seems to betray her, is that her dreamscape—the very soul of her clairvoyance—has been altered, as if there’s a veil shrouding both her memories and abilities. Paige manages to escape and learns she’s been missing and presumed dead for six months. Even more shocking is that she’s somehow outside of Scion’s borders, in the free world where clairvoyants are accepted citizens. She gets in touch with other resistance fighters and journeys to Italy to reconnect with the Domino Programme intelligence network. In stark contrast to the potential of life in the free world is the reality that Scion continues to stretch its influence, with Norway recently falling and Italy a likely next target. Paige is enlisted to discover how Scion is bending free-world political leaders to its will, but before Paige can commit to her mission, she has her own mystery to solve: Where in the world is Arcturus? Paige’s loyalty to Arcturus is tested as she decides how much to trust in their connection and how much information to reveal to the Domino Programme about the Rephaite—the race of immortals from the Netherworld, Arcturus’ people—and their connection to the founding of Scion, as well as the presence of clairvoyant abilities on Earth. While the book is impressively multilayered, the matter-of-fact way in which details from the past are sprinkled throughout will have readers constantly flipping to the glossary. As the series’ scope and the implications of the war against Scion expand, Shannon’s narrative style reads more action-thriller than fantasy. Paige’s powers as a dreamwalker are rarely used here, but when clairvoyance is at play, the story shines.
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781639733965
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An impressive and surprising take on war-story tropes.
A doughboy makes a curious discovery at the front in this inventive metaphysical horror tale.
This novel by Kraus centers on Private Cyril Bagger, a U.S. soldier during World War I and the son of a bishop who died on the Lusitania; he’s taken his father’s Bible with him into the Army as a remembrance. He’s also a confidence man and shirker relegated to burial duty in the French countryside, which is fine with him: The work is grotesque (Kraus depicts wartime deaths in visceral detail) but keeps him from becoming a corpse himself. Alas, his commander has hand-picked him and four other “disreputable” soldiers for a suicide mission to rescue what sounds like an incessantly shrieking soldier. Cyril finds the source of the shrieking, which turns out to be—well, that’s tricky. Cyril sees her as a vaguely familiar woman, clothed in red and blue, bathed in bright light, and capable of magically rescuing him from the worst of German gunfire; members of his cohort see a mother, a former lover, and other women. So for the purposes of Kraus’ novel, the shrieker is a metaphor for the ways war stands in contrast to our deepest needs for care and safety. It’s a sweet sentiment, albeit one that Kraus coats in a lot of ugliness, particularly the seemingly endless human carnage. Kraus structures the novel as an extended run-on sentence (with paragraph breaks), giving the story a relentless and intense rhythm. As a veteran horror writer, he’s gifted at depictions of blood and guts and knows how to keep a story moving, but in its latter stages the novel is a philosophical one as well, concerned with humanity’s seemingly inborn need to wage war and what might counter it. The identity of the woman Cyril calls an angel is vague, but Kraus has a clear grasp on our worst impulses.
An impressive and surprising take on war-story tropes.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781668068458
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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