An imaginative but challenging tale about the power of the past.
In this fantastical prehistoric drama, a tribal chief struggles to make amends for past transgressions.
In the last moments of his life, the cantankerous, unnamed chief of an unnamed tribe makes angry comments about the weaklings all around him, the burdens of family, and fellow tribesmen. When he finally dies, a young woman greets him in the afterlife and informs him that his ancestors refuse to meet him due to his evil ways, which included murder. He’s given another chance, though: he’s reincarnated as an orphan boy named Breygan, with his past life a shadowy memory that only reveals itself obliquely, in his dreams. At the age of 11, he meets Eska, a young girl who’s also an orphan, and returns with her to her village. But when she later grows close to a male rival, Breygan is overcome with jealousy, pushes her off a cliff, and flees. Soon, he finds a sad, motley group living in a cave, only half alive due to past sorrows. Breygan convinces them to leave the cave with him; they embark together on an adventure and meet Ainza, a woman also plagued by her past. Her brothers, Ortzi and Arginn, intend to kill Breygan as a sacrifice to lure the sun back, and they pursue him when he escapes. Meanwhile, Ainza reveals her troubled history, which involves a tribal leader. This is the fourth installment of the Misfits and Heroes series by Rollins (Past the Last Island, 2015, etc.) set some 14,000 years ago, in what is today northern Spain. Like its predecessors, the tale seamlessly combines elements of the real and the magical, conjuring a world that is often bizarre but also artfully plausible. The plot can be very difficult to follow, however, as it’s full of dreamlike sequences. It’s also so laden with heavy-handed symbolism that it can seem, at times, like an overly didactic parable. However, the drama is consistently gripping throughout, and the way that Rollins braids the multiple storylines together is often ingenious.
An imaginative but challenging tale about the power of the past.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-973994-27-5
Page Count: 301
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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