A richly entertaining tale that delivers a captivating history lesson.
A historical novel focuses on King Kamehameha’s successful consolidation of the Hawaiian Islands.
John Young, bosun on the Eleanora, and Isaac Davis, a gunner’s mate, have been captured by the forces of Kamehameha, the most powerful chief on the Big Island (Hawaii, aka Moku Nui). Those forces have also seized a small sloop called the Fair American. Kamehameha recognizes and values talent: Young is to captain the Fair American and Davis is to train the chief’s warriors in the use of Western armaments. These men resist as long as they can—even plot to escape—but eventually, with no other options, they join Kamehameha’s cause, and he even elevates them to ali’i (noble) status. Kamehameha is determined to extend his rule to all of Moku Nui, then conquer the string of islands to the northwest that will become part of present-day Hawaii. This entails ferocious fighting, and Young and Davis do their part. At the book’s end, Kamehameha has conquered all but far-flung Kaua’i and Ni’ihau. O’Leary sticks very close to the actual history, including the important native characters and Kamehameha’s haole (foreign) advisers, Young and Davis. The author is an accomplished writer with a wonderful, (mostly) true tale to tell. Well drawn is the friendship between Young and Davis, strangers in a strange land who first want only to flee but finally, when Capt. Vancouver offers them passage home to England, realize that, with families now, they have become Hawaiians. Still, they never quite get over the brutality that is in ironic contrast to this Edenic archipelago. In Kamehameha’s world, one’s life is loosely held and to die in combat is reward enough. The battles are incredibly grotesque, gory affairs where “expertly wielded war clubs crush skulls, daggers disembowel, spears impale.” So readers get high drama, epic battles, and an engaging account of Hawaiian history. O’Leary provides a useful glossary of the Hawaiian words sprinkled liberally through the text, though they will still present a challenge to the audience. And because the Hawaiian characters’ names will be quite confusing to many readers, a list of them as front matter would have been helpful.
A richly entertaining tale that delivers a captivating history lesson.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-980924-49-4
Page Count: 484
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
This luxurious novel is set to take the world by storm.
The true story of Axis diplomats detained in the U.S. at the start of World War II is transformed into a dazzling historical novel set at a sumptuous West Virginia hotel.
Bestselling YA fantasy author Stiefvater’s adult debut introduces a writer whose prodigious imagination and distinctive prose style have combined to create a novel that will remind readers of why they fell in love with reading in the first place. At its center is the captivating June Hudson, an erstwhile Appalachian orphan who was taken in by the wealthy Gilfoyle family, owners of the Avallon Hotel & Spa, a high-society retreat built over underground mineral springs. At his death, the patriarch bequeathed ownership to his playboy son, Edgar, but made June the general manager, as she had spent her life learning the business—and also shared with Gilfoyle Sr. a rare gift relating to the “sweetwater” springs, a fantastical element of this otherwise realistic novel. Aside from the magical waters and a few other fanciful details, Stiefvater’s fictional world is based on extensive research into high-end hotels of the period, creating a version of luxury so appealing that readers will wish they could check into the Avallon and stay on indefinitely. In fact, the novel revolves around the true meaning of luxury. To June, it has nothing to do with wealth; it is more connected to joy, and to the book’s title: “June had long ago discovered that most people were bad listeners; they thought listening was synonymous with hearing. But the spoken was only half a conversation. True needs, wants, fears, and hopes hid not in the words that were said, but in the ones that weren’t, and all these formed the core of luxury.” Also brilliantly managed is the rest of the ensemble cast: sexy FBI agents; June’s inimitable staff; the delegations of Japanese, Germans, and Italians detained at the hotel, some quite nasty, but among them a strange, special, totally silent child. And on top of all this, a delicious love story!
This luxurious novel is set to take the world by storm.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780593655504
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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