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
As in Resurrection (1966) and The Wreckage of Agathon (1970) Gardner demonstrates his agility at juggling metaphysical notions while telling a diverting tale. Here he has used as a means of discovering man's unsavory ways that muzziest of monsters, Grendel, from the Beowulf chronicle. As in the original, Grendel is a bewildering combination of amorphous threats and grisly specifics — he bellows in the wilds and crunches through hapless inhabitants of the meadhall. But Grendel, the essence of primal violence, is also a learning creature. Itc listens to a wheezing bore with scales and coils, a pedantic Lucifer, declaim on the relentless complexity of cosmic accident. He hears an old priest put in a word for God as unity of discords, where nothing is lost. And Grendel continues to observe the illusions of bards, kings, heroes, and soldiers, occasionally eating one. After the true hero arrives sprouting fiery wings, to deal the death blow, he shows Grendel the reality of both destruction and rebirth. Throughout the trackless philosophic speculation, the dialogue is witty and often has a highly contemporary tilt: "The whole shit-ass scene was his idea, not mine," says Grendel, disgusted by a sacrificial hero. At the close one is not sure if the savior is "blithe of his deed," but Gardner, the word-pleaser, should be.
Pub Date: Sept. 17, 1971
ISBN: 0679723110
Page Count: 186
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1971
Final installment—each entry independently intelligible—of Hobb's stunning fantasy trilogy (Royal Assassin, 1996; Assassin's Apprentice, 1995) about the beleaguered Six Duchies and their Farseer kings. Months ago, King Verity vanished into the far mountains in search of the semi-mythical Elderlings, whose help he must have in order to defeat the rampaging Red Ship Raiders, leaving his murderous, venal, and insanely ambitious brother, Prince Regal, to dispose of Verity's last few loyalists at his leisure—including narrator, spy, and assassin FitzChivalry. Poor Fitz, unable to contact his beloved Molly (she thinks he's dead) and daughter (by Molly) for fear of exposing them to Regal's attentions, uses his magic Skill to locate Verity and receives an imperious summons: ``COME TO ME!'' So, abandoning his plan to assassinate Regal, Fitz enters the mountains with a small band of helpers. Eventually, having evaded Regal's minions, Fitz comes upon Verity Skill-carving a huge dragon out of black rock; nearby stand other lifelike dragon-sculptures that, to Fitz's animal-magic Wit, seem somehow alive. Are these eerie sculptures what remain of the Elderlings? Yet, for all his Skill, Verity cannot bring the dragons to life; and soon Regal will arrive with his armies and his Skilled coterie. An enthralling conclusion to this superb trilogy, displaying an exceptional combination of originality, magic, adventure, character, and drama.
Pub Date: March 15, 1997
ISBN: 0-553-10640-6
Page Count: 668
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997
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