Paranormal fantasy and historical fiction fans alike should find Kenyon’s saga featuring assassins, spies, and secret agents...
Set in pre–World War II Europe and seamlessly blending together elements of paranormal fantasy and historical mystery, the second installment in Kenyon’s Dark Talents saga featuring British Secret Intelligence Service agent Kim Tavistock (At the Table of Wolves, 2017) pits the intrepid journalist-turned-operative against a serial killer with ties to Hitler’s Nazi regime.
Charged with tracking down the person (or persons) who is ritualistically murdering young people with psychic talents all over Britain, Tavistock—posing as a writer for the London Register—investigates a possible connection between the brutal killings and a Nazi-supporting baroness and her adult son living in a seaside castle in Wales. The sickly baroness, named Dorothea Coslett—who heads an esoteric group called Ancient Light—welcomes Tavistock, who is allegedly researching an article on spiritualism, to the remote Sulcliffe Castle, perched high on a cliff overlooking an ancient sea henge visible only at low tide. Tavistock finds a possible suspect in the baroness’s son, who is attempting to come into his own (nonexistent) psychic powers. As Tavistock closes in on the killer, her father, Julian, who works as a case officer at SIS, pursues his own investigation into a similar killing in Poland by attempting to identify a mysterious Dutchman with “a crooked light in his eyes” and a penchant for restoring antique dolls. Both plot threads eventually intertwine with unforeseen results. The power of this narrative is in Kenyon’s meticulously described portrayal of 1936 Europe and her deep character development—even peripheral characters like Martin Lister, a boy with psychic abilities, and Lloyd Nichols , a failed beat writer, are three-dimensional and fully realized. Brisk pacing, nonstop action, dark atmospherics, and an undeniably endearing heroine make this effortlessly readable.
Paranormal fantasy and historical fiction fans alike should find Kenyon’s saga featuring assassins, spies, and secret agents to be supremely entertaining. A unique concept that is superbly executed.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4814-8784-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
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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