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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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