A historical fantasy that crackles with electricity.
A powerful amnesiac must escape her captors to search for her past.
In this fantasy, Nazafareen, “a mortal with da?va blood and the ability to shatter magic,” is being held in Nocturne, a realm of perpetual night. Her right hand is missing, and she remembers virtually nothing of her past, which is how the element-wielding da?vas like it. She’s closest with Darius of House Dessarian, who carried her through the Dominion gate after her magic-nullifying powers overloaded. The elementals keep Nazafareen hidden from the Valkirin, another clan, who want her dead. She’d prefer the truth about her past, however, to remaining an outcast among the da?vas. When a Valkirin messenger arrives from the Val Moraine holdfast, she learns that she must surrender or risk creating a war between da?va clans. Meanwhile, at Val Moraine, a fallen warrior named Culach, blind and covered in severe burns, convalesces. He’s cared for by Mina, a Dessarian hostage whom he despises. Back in Nocturne, a flying machine made from ropes and fabric crashes, delivering an emissary from the mortal realm of Samarqand. As the visitor, Javid, discusses economic backchannels with Lady Tethys, Nazafareen plans her escape via airship. Unfortunately, Culach’s father, Eirik, hopes to strike a mortal blow at House Dessarian and eliminate the “abomination” it protects. In this series opener, Ross (The Thirteenth Gate, 2017, etc.) returns to the alternate ancient Persia of her Fourth Element trilogy and offers a spoiler-free reintroduction of her characters and their intertwined backstories. The author’s excitement and clarity of vision should impress those who’ve never read her before. The narrative’s magical components never overshadow the players and their struggles (Lady Tethys tells Nazafareen, regarding her amnesia, “Some people might see it as a gift. A chance to start life anew”). And the characters newly taking shape are thrilling to behold. The chimeras, for example, are “bound together by air and thus translucent except for the blood coursing through...delicately branching veins and occasional clots of darker matter.” Layered subplots featuring Culach, Mina, and Javid provide an embarrassment of riches. The finale primes audiences to learn about the legendary Vatras, who did what other elementals can’t—control fire.
A historical fantasy that crackles with electricity.Pub Date: Dec. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9990481-0-8
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Acorn
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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