Wow. Gripping. But smoke Lilith? Not likely. Next: The Damned.
Fifth in the Afro-American hip-hop Damali Richards Vampire Huntress series.
Damali’s lover, Carlos Rivera, was turned. So what’s a Vampire Huntress gonna do when her lover’s on the other team? In Bitten (2004), Carlos was led by the chairman of the Vampire Council, on the Dark Force’s sixth level of Hell, to impregnate Damali (after having bitten her) and thus to cause the Neteru (Damali), a creature born once in a millennium, to give birth to an Antichrist who will fight for the Dark Force when Armageddon bursts forth. But Carlos is lured by angels to fly into the Light and hence gets reduced to ash. Now, Damali plunges the powerful Isis blade into the heart of the ashes and Carlos bubbles up, rebuilt and confused but human once more. Damali has a miscarriage, bloodying herself, and Carlos vows revenge against the chairman. But Hell’s in turmoil. While Carlos, their master, was still ashes, many of his pack’s top vampires also turned to ash. And so the chairman has his problems. The seductress Lilith, next in power to the Devil, rises from the seventh and deepest level and tells the chairman that the Devil, fed up with him, has issued a bounty on Carlos and has freed were-cats and other demons from the upper five levels to hunt him down and return the Neteru so that a new Antichrist may be born. Carlos, no longer a master, worries that he’s human again, with no income and seemingly no superpowers. And he knows that Damali is the Neteru. About to be sterilized on a plane to the Vatican, Damali is carried off in an electric cloud to a conclave of goddesses in Philadelphia, among them the Eve whose Adam was seduced by Lilith, who then gave birth to demons. Now Lilith’s stolen Damali’s miscarried fertilized egg and will herself give birth to the Antichrist. The goddesses assign Damali one task: smoke the bitch.
Wow. Gripping. But smoke Lilith? Not likely. Next: The Damned.Pub Date: July 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-312-33622-5
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2005
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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