Though the tale is dense with dialogue, the unique protagonist makes for an engaging companion on the journey.
Trzebunia’s coming-of-age fantasy novel follows a gifted young woman as a prophecy sets political machinations in motion.
Peregrine is 12 winters old. Her father, Sir Walter, is one of the King’s Knights in the realm of Moran. It may not be a typical routine for a young lady, but Peregrine spends her mornings training with a weapons master named Roth. She is also skilled in the use of healing herbs, and she can tell when someone is lying. Perhaps most impressive of all, though, is her ability to communicate with animals. Despite such talents, Peregrine doesn’t get along with her disapproving stepmother. Not that Peregrine goes around advertising her abilities—she mostly talks to her father about such things. It is he who points out that, while she is indeed a rare person, “It is the rarest gem that carries the most value.” When Peregrine’s father vanishes, she is, of course, concerned; to complicate matters, after he disappears, a girl from the neighboring kingdom of Din Sul shows up in the Moran woods. The girl, Tianan, is confused about how she wound up in this location—particularly since Moran’s relations with Din Sul have been strained for years. Meanwhile, in Din Sul, the emperor is told of a prophecy that indicates the emergence of two important powers. While one of these powers would appear to be someone like a king, the other is more mysterious: the Gatherer of Creation. Regardless of who this Gatherer turns out to be, the emperor has plans to harness both powers so that he can one day take over the land of Moran.
The novel doles out quite a bit of information early in the text: Readers learn of Peregrine’s routines, her abilities with various animals, the difficulties with her stepmother, and the fun she has with her sister. As pleasant a character as Peregrine is, there’s not a whole lot of action to compel readers’ attention until her father disappears, nearly 100 pages into the story. Much of the heavy page count is given over to dialogue; when the characters talk, they tend to talk a lot (a typically verbose passage reads, “I am not ashamed to tell you that I am a nobody, from nowhere, hidden my whole life in the middle of a forest down at the tip of the kingdom”). Peregrine is, nevertheless, an endearing protagonist, and not necessarily a character whom readers might expect to lead a fantasy novel. Sure, she’s trained in combat, but healing and communicating are more her bailiwick; after all, she can help a tree’s health by touching it. As she gets older and her abilities increase, she’s able to lead readers further into the unknown. And the book has a great deal of the unknown, beyond Moran and even Din Sul. Later on, Peregrine laments, “Had I had even one day of inner peace since my father had disappeared all those years ago?” This lack of peace helps the story maintain continuous forward motion.
Though the tale is dense with dialogue, the unique protagonist makes for an engaging companion on the journey.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Jack Frost Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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