As exhaustingly inventive and jokey as Dan’s debut. Think of the entire first season of True Blood on fast forward.
Another full caseload for Dan Shamble, the zombie detective who was just warming up when he solved his own murder in Death Warmed Over (2012).
Dan’s reputation in the Unnatural Quarter has made him the shamus of last resort for any number of monsters. A golem named Bill begs him to help emancipate a hundred of his fellow golems from their servitude making toys for Maximilian Grubb, aka Maximum Max. The ghost of bank robber Alphonse Wheeler wants the help of Dan’s partner, still-human lawyer Robin Deyer, in making sure he can live off the money he served 20 years for stealing. Neffi, the mummy who runs the Full Moon brothel, summons Dan to find some rent-a-goons to protect her establishment from the violent followers of conservative Sen. Rupert Balfour, whose Unnatural Acts Act threatens the rights of all the undead. Dan’s old nemesis Harvey Jekyll insists that Robin file an anti-discrimination suit when he’s barred from moving out of the Unnatural Quarter. An actor who insists that his name is William Shakespeare hires Dan to find the person who set his outdoor theater on fire, and crusading social worker Hope Saldana asks him to help her zombie assistant, Jerry, track down the heart and soul he pawned to Snazz, the gremlin owner of Timeworn Treasures. It’s this last case that produces a fresh corpse when Dan breaks into Snazz’s cluttered shop, intending to look over the ledger that identifies the party who purchased Jerry’s heart and soul, and finds the pawnbroker strangled to death under circumstances that look very awkward indeed for the zombie sleuth.
As exhaustingly inventive and jokey as Dan’s debut. Think of the entire first season of True Blood on fast forward.Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7582-7736-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
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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