A pulsating blood-booster for raw adolescents—nobody over 20 should buy this.
Blade meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer in this first of a trilogy about a no-nonsense guerrilla leader of a rock-’n’-roll vampire-killer band. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do to make Rolling Stone.
Like, really, does this all spring from Sun-tzu’s The Art of War, as the pseudonymous Banks suggests? Or does Damali Richards’s destiny spring from an event 20 years before, in New Orleans, when her father, Reverend Armand Richards, was turned by master vampire Fallon Nuit and her mother Sarah went to the swamp witch and fatally tried to follow the witch’s steps for exorcising Fallon Nuit, a member of the Vampire High Council and an elder dweller of the dark realm? While all that took place, the Richards’s infant Damali was baby-sat by Marlene Stone—while now, in the present, Marlene is the graying, visionary, real cool seer-guardian of Damali’s Warriors of Light Productions guardian-slayer band of devampers, with Sistah Marlene on electric violin, Mexican Indian Jose, a.k.a. Wizard, on drums and crossbow, Jake Rider on electric guitar, J.L. on crossbow, wooden stake and computer, Big Mike Roberts as audio-sensor, and Shabazz as Aikido-instructor/choreographer/bassist. That’s a bassist who triples in martial arts and dance? Whatever. You know the drill: Rhino bullets fresh-packed with hallowed earth, holy water grenades with the blast of C-4. Just don’t get nicked and turned when vibes sense in the audience multiple cold bodies that need icing. Nobody’s expendable, and four band members have already been nicked or exhumaned. But chill, man, Damali’s kick-ass elements can bring down a small army of vampires. So let’s do this. Except that Damali’s team now finds itself fighting a newer entity that eats out necks, hearts—call it the Amanthra thing from Hell. Later, Fallon Nuit abducts Damali’s sometime lover Carlos Rivera, a Hollywood club owner, and tempts him with the earthly glories earned by Blood Music, Inc. Bad, bad Carlos.
A pulsating blood-booster for raw adolescents—nobody over 20 should buy this.Pub Date: June 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-31680-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003
Gwynne’s effort pales in comparison to George R.R. Martin’s gold-standard work, but it’s nothing bad; the story grinds to a...
A middling Middle Earth–ish extravaganza with all the usual thrills, chills, spills and frills.
All modern fantasy begins with J.R.R. Tolkien, and Tolkien begins with the Icelandic sagas and the Mabinogion. Debut author Gwynne’s overstuffed but slow-moving contribution to the genre—the first in a series, of course—wears the latter source on its sleeve: “Fionn ap Toin, Marrock ben Rhagor, why do you come here on this first day of the Birth Moon?” Why, indeed? Well, therein hangs the tale. The protagonist is a 14-year-old commoner named Corban, son of a swineherd, who, as happens in such things, turns out to be more resourceful than his porcine-production background might suggest. There are bad doings afoot in Tintagel—beg pardon, the Banished Lands—where nobles plot against nobles even as there are stirrings of renewed titanomachia, that war between giants and humans having given the place some of its gloominess. There’s treachery aplenty, peppered with odd episodes inspired by other sources, such as an Androcles-and-lion moment in which Corban rescues a fierce wolven (“rarely seen here, preferring the south of Ardan, regions of deep forest and sweeping moors, where the auroch herds roamed”). It’s a good move: You never can tell when a wolven ally will come in handy, especially when there are wyrms around.
Gwynne’s effort pales in comparison to George R.R. Martin’s gold-standard work, but it’s nothing bad; the story grinds to a halt at points, but at others, there’s plenty of action.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-39973-9
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
The first installment of an effortlessly readable series that could be the illegitimate love child of Terry Pratchett and...
The debut novel from Australian actor Arnold is a fusion of paranormal fantasy and mystery set in a world where magic has been effectively destroyed by humans, forcing the supernatural population to live a radically diminished existence.
Fetch Phillips is a “Man for Hire,” which is another way of saying the down-on-his-luck, hard-drinking former Soldier–turned-detective will do just about anything to pay the bills. When a principal from a cross-species school enlists him to find a missing professor—a 300-year-old Vampire named Edmund Rye—Phillips quickly agrees. Without magic, the Vampires—and all other supernatural beings—are slowly dying. So how difficult could it be to find a withered bloodsucker who is so weak he can hardly move around? After visiting Rye’s last residence—a secluded loft space in the local library filled with the Vampire’s research and writings—Phillips discovers that one of Rye’s students is missing as well: a young Siren named January. His investigation becomes complicated when more Vampires turn up dead and he is almost killed himself. While the mystery element of the storyline is a bit thin, the focus on meticulous worldbuilding and highly detailed backstory as well as the cast of fully developed and memorable characters (Simms, the reptilian cop; Peteris, the disfigured half-werewolf; etc.) are unarguable strengths. But the real power here is in Arnold’s use of imagery throughout. His unconventional descriptive style brings a richness and depth to the narrative. Pete’s smile is “like a handbag with a broken zipper,” and the sound of Phillips’ falling from a building is “like someone stepping on an egg full of snails.”
The first installment of an effortlessly readable series that could be the illegitimate love child of Terry Pratchett and Dashiell Hammett.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-45582-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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