Richly textured and fabulously conceived.
Magic and religion struggle to govern a city filled with dark urges in this fantasy series opener.
In the city of Novostopol, Alexei Bryce is a priest of the Curia. The priesthood teaches the Via Sancta, the belief that “all things, however mundane, must be beautiful.” They also tattoo elaborate “Marks” on citizens to dull vices like greed and violence. One night, Bryce and his partner, Patryk Spassov, hunt an Invertido, someone whose Mark has been inverted, most likely by a Nightmage, one of the Curia’s longtime enemies. The Invertido are considered sick, incapable of resisting base desires, and once caught, they are committed to the Batavia Institute. Dr. Ferran Massot runs Batavia, but tonight he hosts a party. He invites Natalya Anderle, a cartomancer, to visit and read his fortune with her deck. Feeling ill, Natalya sends her roommate, Kasia Novak, in her place. Kasia sees misfortune ahead for Massot, who attacks her. With the help of magical dogs called Markhounds, Bryce and Spassov track down Massot before he can hurt Kasia, little fathoming what she’s stolen from the doctor’s home. Meanwhile, the Nightmage Malach holds rancor in his heart after the Curia wiped out his people in the jungles of Bal Kirith. He plans revenge with the help of a woman willing to bear him a special child. Ross drapes a tense political thriller in a trench coat of dark fantasy. A magic system in which ley lines network the city and citizens can tap into three increasingly dangerous layers of power gives characters room to shift allegiances. Touches of noir charge the prose (“Red light bled from Malach’s sleeves. It flickered in the depths of his eyes like a pair of burning embers”), and plot threads twine intricately. A thrilling dynamic exists among the Curia, the citizens they test for Mark compatibility, and those who fail the test—people considered “sociopathic deviants.” Readers should expect the unexpected.
Richly textured and fabulously conceived.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73461-846-4
Page Count: 506
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
Weird and haunting and excellent.
The much-anticipated second novel from the author of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (2004).
The narrator of this novel answers to the name “Piranesi” even though he suspects that it's not his name. This name was chosen for him by the Other, the only living person Piranesi has encountered during his extensive explorations of the House. Readers who recognize Piranesi as the name of an Italian artist known for his etchings of Roman ruins and imaginary prisons might recognize this as a cruel joke that the Other enjoys at the expense of the novel’s protagonist. It is that, but the name is also a helpful clue for readers trying to situate themselves in the world Clarke has created. The character known as Piranesi lives within a Classical structure of endless, inescapable halls occasionally inundated by the sea. These halls are inhabited by statues that seem to be allegories—a woman carrying a beehive; a dog-fox teaching two squirrels and two satyrs; two children laughing, one of them carrying a flute—but the meaning of these images is opaque. Piranesi is happy to let the statues simply be. With her second novel, Clarke invokes tropes that have fueled a century of surrealist and fantasy fiction as well as movies, television series, and even video games. At the foundation of this story is an idea at least as old as Chaucer: Our world was once filled with magic, but the magic has drained away. Clarke imagines where all that magic goes when it leaves our world and what it would be like to be trapped in that place. Piranesi is a naif, and there’s much that readers understand before he does. But readers who accompany him as he learns to understand himself will see magic returning to our world.
Weird and haunting and excellent.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63557-563-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
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