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
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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