Highly recommended, especially to readers tired of the usual thing.
Those who prefer epics painted in sophisticated shades of gray to ultimate battles of good and evil will relish this first volume of a trilogy, published in the U.K. in 2005.
The Perpetual Republic of Mezentia operates according to the principles of mass production; however, those principles are so calcified that innovation is not only stifled, it’s punishable by death. When weapons engineer Ziani Vaatzes is condemned for making a nonstandard mechanical doll for his daughter’s birthday, he manages to evade his jailors and escape to the small duchy of Eremia Montis. Jealous of their secrets, Mezentia is prepared to exterminate all of Eremia to prevent Vaatzes from passing on any of his knowledge. Meanwhile, Vaatzes is concocting a complex scheme that will allow him to return to his beloved wife and child. This scheme, which Vaatzes imagines as a vast machine, involves war on a massive scale and betrayals both large and small. Thousands will be destroyed in the operation of Vaatzes’s device, but he simply doesn’t care, as long as he gets to go home. After a flood of books that revolve around the fight for a throne, the destruction of evil and/or the search for a long-lost magical McGuffin, it’s refreshing and innovative to read a work whose plot is based on simple and deeply personal stakes.
Highly recommended, especially to readers tired of the usual thing.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-316-00338-4
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
Intermittently lumpy and self-indulgent, but enormously entertaining throughout. And the Gaiman faithful—as hungry for...
The West African spider-trickster god Anansi presides benignly over this ebullient partial sequel to Gaiman’s award-winning fantasy American Gods (2001).
In his earthly incarnation as agelessly spry “Mr. Nancy,” the god has died, been buried and mourned (in Florida), and has left (in England) an adult son called Fat Charlie—though he isn’t fat; he is in fact a former “boy who was half a god . . . broken into two by an old woman with a grudge.” His other “half” is Charlie’s hitherto unknown brother Spider, summoned via animistic magic, thereafter an affable quasi-double and provocateur who steals Charlie’s fiancé Rosie and stirs up trouble with Charlie’s blackhearted boss, “weasel”-like entrepeneur-embezzler Grahame Coats. These characters and several other part-human, part-animal ones mesh in dizzying comic intrigues that occur on two continents, in a primitive “place at the end of the world,” in dreams and on a conveniently remote, extradition-free Caribbean island. The key to Gaiman’s ingenious plot is the tale of how Spider (Anansi) tricked Tiger, gaining possession of the world’s vast web of stories and incurring the lasting wrath of a bloodthirsty mortal—perhaps immortal—enemy. Gaiman juggles several intersecting narratives expertly (though when speaking as omniscient narrator, he does tend to ramble), blithely echoing numerous creation myths and folklore motifs, Terry Southern’s antic farces, Evelyn Waugh’s comic contes cruel, and even—here and there—Muriel Spark’s whimsical supernaturalism. Everything comes together smashingly, in an extended dénouement that pits both brothers against all Tiger’s malevolent forms, resolves romantic complications satisfactorily and reasserts the power of stories and songs to represent, sustain and complete us. The result, though less dazzling than American Gods, is even more moving.
Intermittently lumpy and self-indulgent, but enormously entertaining throughout. And the Gaiman faithful—as hungry for stories as Tiger himself—will devour it gratefully.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-051518-X
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Gold ingots, a corpulent white sow, polyandry, incest, miscegenation, a new time-portal and much backstory augment this...
Time-travelers revolutionize colonial America with anachronisms and cliffhangers galore, in Gabaldon’s sixth Outlander epic.
It’s 1773, and we rejoin Jamie Fraser, an exiled Scots laird, and his 20th-century physician wife Claire in the North Carolina colony where they had emigrated in Drums of Autumn (1997). Their mountain compound, Fraser’s Ridge, is shared by daughter Brianna, her husband Roger and, intermittently, by Ian, Jamie’s semi-feral nephew, a former adopted Mohawk. Brianna and Roger, also moderns, had slipped through a time portal in the Highlands. Jamie and Claire, now middle-aged, still have plenty of swash in their buckle. Roger doubts son Jem’s paternity since Brianna was raped by pirate Stephen Bonnet in a previous installment. Jamie, forced to swear fealty to the Crown, inwardly espouses the rebel cause, and not just because his relatives know who wins. Abductions and daring rescues abound. Claire is kidnapped by a band of marauding arsonists. On her return, hot flashes and non-stop medical emergencies demand her attention. Homemade penicillin, quinine and ether help her cure appendicitis, malaria and syphilis. Brianna invents matches, makes paper and almost brings hot running water to the Ridge. When Claire falls ill amid a dysentery epidemic, no one suspects her assistant Malva, abused daughter (actually niece) of Jamie’s comrade Tom Christie. Later, Malva, six months pregnant, implicates Jamie. Claire finds Malva dead, her throat slit, and attempts an emergency Caesarian. Taken prisoner, Claire becomes the colonial governor’s unpaid scribe. While Roger, called to the ministry, is away seeking ordination, Brianna is snatched by one of Jamie’s enemies, and ends up the captive, once more, of the unsinkable Bonnet.
Gold ingots, a corpulent white sow, polyandry, incest, miscegenation, a new time-portal and much backstory augment this installment’s edematous bloat.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2005
ISBN: 0-385-32416-2
Page Count: 992
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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