Brimming with well-defined details and characters; augmented by bountiful enthusiasm and spirit.
In Rice’s fantasy series launch, an island ruled by seven clans faces body-possessing demons and a threat of a Holy War.
Eliles is a postulant at Istinjoln Monastery on the island of Kaludor. She’s spent years keeping mum about her feral magic (an ability to generate fire); the Church would likely deem it a defilement and torture her to death. She plans to leave the monastery but first learns one of her friends has been killed by the Colok, big, bearlike creatures. Oddly, high priest Woxlin is fascinated by a scroll strapped to the victim. When Eliles manages to get eyes on the scroll’s message, she realizes that some in Kaludor are worried about beings called the Shadows. Ivin Choerkin of the Choerkin clan, meanwhile, checks on a cave-in at the clan’s Ihomjo mines, which left miners trapped. He finds signs of a Colok attack but also evidence of Shadows from the Stone, noncorporeal demons that possess humans. As Eliles, Ivin, and others soon learn, the Shadows are a part of a much bigger plan—all someone’s bid for power. The plan ultimately puts everyone in danger of a potential Holy War, which would surely leave the island in ruins. Though the novel is dense in plot and characters, debut novelist Rice maintains a surprisingly sharp focus. An unhurried pace, for example, allows for clearly defined characters, despite their abundance. The narrative likewise zeros in on recent events, while the Great Forgetting keeps the larger backstory murky (gods stole mortals’ memories of the past). Rich descriptions assume medieval attributes: “A drawbridge of oaken planks stretched across a twenty-foot chasm, leading into a gatehouse with three iron portcullises and murder holes above.” The final act boosts the action, introduces menaces, and involves a few shocking revelations. The tale moreover has a definitive conclusion, while making it clear that further volumes await.
Brimming with well-defined details and characters; augmented by bountiful enthusiasm and spirit.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 522
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
