Provides an action-packed turning point in the series and sets the stage for fresh adventures.
Hammer’s (Balor’s Might, 2015, etc.) third adventure finds the demon-smashing Sons of Odin on the brink of annihilation.
Dark clouds spread from the peak of Kerak’Otozi, and the threat of the Dark One looms over the fantastic world of Kismeria. The Sons of Odin—Adem Highlander, Wil Martyr, and Carl Wilder—along with the Daughter of Thor, Jean Fairsythe, realize that they must grow their ranks and power before their prophesied showdown with unimaginable evil. Personal dilemmas plague Adem, like the migraines that require daily Healing and the insufferable Princess Isabelle, who’s pregnant with their child. Fortune graces the heroes when the vampiric Hayley begins swearing captured vampires into her newly formed coven. Further help arrives in the form of Shienden’kroxus, a small emerald dragon that Adem creates (according to prophecy) with the Power. While battling demons along the Borderlands, Adem has the epiphany that, “even these bloodthirsty monsters were victims in the Dark Lord’s incessant schemes.” Adem and his dragon eventually venture forth separately from Kismeria’s heroes. He wonders, “if he felt compassion for evil, was he not also becoming evil?” Worse, Adem blocks his companions from communicating through their patron deities, the Battle Angels, which sets them worrying that madness has finally taken him. In his third installment of the series, Hammer continues to tap a vein of phantasmagoric mayhem that should mesmerize video gamers and fans of the Lord of the Rings alike. Nearly every page displays eye-popping battle visuals: “Lightning filled the sky, a rainbow of coloured bolts, a thousand falling every second to turn the grey haze into a bright neon flare.” That said, readers of more character-driven fantasies may grow fatigued by Hammer’s penchant for elaborate magical warfare. Heartfelt surprises abound, however, like when Adem quotes from the Bible to describe Jean (“She is more precious than rubies, nothing you desire can compare with her”). The underlying themes of humanity’s imperfection and the individual’s struggle toward a truer self permeate this narrative, which sets the heroes in a new direction.
Provides an action-packed turning point in the series and sets the stage for fresh adventures.Pub Date: March 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4931-3591-2
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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