Says Tom of the cathedral he plans to build, it’s “simple, inexpensive, graceful and perfectly proportioned.” This app...
Follett’s 1,000-plus-page blockbuster, originally published in 1989, morphs into a sprawling (1.6 GB) iPad app, complete with text, videos and sound.
Closely following last season’s Starz serial, Pillars seems as much a promotion of that film adaptation as a repurposing of the original novel. The text, of course, is here in all its glory, though the text is plain vanilla, without much fuss; it’s easy to navigate and to bookmark, but with all the visual excitement of a phone directory. The non-book elements are better handled, including too-short snippets from the series (with Ian McShane doing what he does best, namely playing evil) and Gregorian chants and other medieval tunes. The text and visuals are supplemented by biographies of the cast and, more usefully, of charts showing relationships among the principal characters, from the very bad to the very saintly. Still, the makers of the app might have done more to link these good things to the text, which sometimes seems an afterthought.
Says Tom of the cathedral he plans to build, it’s “simple, inexpensive, graceful and perfectly proportioned.” This app really isn’t any of those things, though Follett fans may find it a source of wonder. Now, a mash-up with the text and David Macaulay’s book Cathedral (1973)—there would be a thing to behold.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
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
Steinbeck's peculiarly intense simplicity of technique is admirably displayed in this vignette — a simple, tragic tale of Mexican little people, a story retold by the pearl divers of a fishing hamlet until it has the quality of folk legend. A young couple content with the humble living allowed them by the syndicate which controls the sale of the mediocre pearls ordinarily found, find their happiness shattered when their baby boy is stung by a scorpion. They dare brave the terrors of a foreign doctor, only to be turned away when all they can offer in payment is spurned. Then comes the miracle. Kino find a great pearl. The future looks bright again. The baby is responding to the treatment his mother had given. But with the pearl, evil enters the hearts of men:- ambition beyond his station emboldens Kino to turn down the price offered by the dealers- he determines to go to the capital for a better market; the doctor, hearing of the pearl, plants the seed of doubt and superstition, endangering the child's life, so that he may get his rake-off; the neighbors and the strangers turn against Kino, burn his hut, ransack his premises, attack him in the dark — and when he kills, in defense, trail him to the mountain hiding place- and kill the child. Then- and then only- does he concede defeat. In sorrow and humility, he returns with his Juana to the ways of his people; the pearl is thrown into the sea.... A parable, this, with no attempt to add to its simple pattern.
Pub Date: Nov. 24, 1947
ISBN: 0140187383
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1947
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