A tantalizing series opener that leaves little room for character development.
In Walker’s fantasy debut, twin brothers accidentally unleash an ancient, malevolent force upon their father’s kingdom.
On the world of Mythos, 19-year-old twins Kian’Huard and Ko’Resh are heirs to the throne of the House of Rhuna. The brothers have been enjoying the Spring Festival in the city of Kephas, and while out riding, they find a cave leading into the nearby mountain that seems to have suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Ko’Resh, the more reckless of the two, insists that the cave simply “revealed itself” and wants to explore it. Kian’Huard reminds him the mountain is home to the sacred Temple of Osiris and that trespassers may be put to death. Nonetheless, they feel strangely compelled to walk through the cavern system. When the entrance behind them closes, Kian’Huard knows that “solveige” (or dark magic) is at work. They eventually pass a stone gateway and encounter seven powerful spirits called the Sem Lukos Resh. Six of them invade Ko’Resh’s body, while the remaining one invades Kian’Huard. The brothers are missing from Kephas for four moon cycles. Then Kian’Huard, alone, meets Kri’Attole, his mentor, outside Kephas. However, when Kian’Huard’s father, Sharram Kar’Set, tries to have them both arrested, the young man realizes that he and his brother have become puppets of the horrid spirits. For this ambitious novel, Walker crafts a tale that’s heavy on graphic visuals and Eastern religious motifs. The discipline of Tae’Heb, for example, addresses “seven main power centers within the body,” like chakras, “each tuned to a frequency that supported specific functions of the body and psyche.” When Ko’Resh’s power centers are corrupted by the Sem Lukos Resh, he gains superpowers, including speed and strength. When the brothers battle, Walker’s prose is baroque in style: “Swords flashed in shafts of light...arcing explosions of electric rainbows ringing with death lust.” The narrative straddles centuries, as the villainous Sharram Saal hopes to manipulate Rhuna bloodlines to create a child that can contain the seven spirits. Unfortunately, Walker’s dry characterization makes the various players feel like mere pawns in the epic plot.
A tantalizing series opener that leaves little room for character development.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5255-3278-8
Page Count: 294
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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