A slow-paced yet big-hearted satire.
In this comic fantasy, an aspiring writer accidentally creates a penguin-based religion, setting her at odds with her devout mother, a violent king, and the eccentric pantheon of gods her brainchild threatens to unseat.
On a mostly desert world where the sun no longer sets, a smattering of towns is ruled by a cruel, diseased king who plans to overthrow the Ageless, an immortal but largely absentee assemblage of deities. Since the death of her father in one of King Rulf’s many wars, Zeggara “Egg” East lives under the influence of her mother, the Holy Devoted Sarene, who wishes for her daughter to commit to worshiping the Ageless as she does. But Egg only wishes to be a writer. So Egg’s manuscript, Grand Teachings of the Almighty Penguin, is, naturally, a commentary on religion, where an eternal Penguin arrives in a village to teach the people how to be more “penguiny.” Much to her surprise, the story’s popularity births a new religion, Penguinism, and now a simple mother-daughter conflict threatens to hatch into a holy war. The timing couldn’t be worse for a religious crusade, as the leaders of the Ageless—the God of Creation and Goddess of Order—tell their family in a crystal heaven about their impending divorce and retirement. Equally worrisome, King Rulf has discovered the gods’ lethal seafood allergy, with only the God of Waste Management and the shameless yet sincere Jack-of-12-Trades named Trast to stop him. A fantasy comedy that swims in similarly madcap waters as works by Terry Pratchett and Christopher Moore, Massa’s novel coolly and deftly introduces a farcical setting that reflects the absurdity of today’s world, brimming with commentary on religion, capitalism, and writing. The book likes to play with language and puns, and Egg’s journey pokes fun at writers, readers, publishers, and more, though its appeal reaches far beyond wordsmiths and satirists. Unfortunately, the tale’s pacing could most fittingly be described as a waddle, its length making clever ideas like the Ageless’ seafood allergy and the Penguinists’ evolving and eclectic religious practices eventually grow tiresome. The author restates plot elements and Egg’s odyssey to keep the story moving. This distracts somewhat from one of the tale’s most intriguing themes: that moments of real kindness and connection between characters come not from humor, but rather the unexpected sharing of tragedy.
A slow-paced yet big-hearted satire.Pub Date: May 16, 2022
ISBN: 979-8825594620
Page Count: 486
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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