A marathon of fantasy gore and slow-building characterizations in a land confronting demons.
In this fantasy debut, four individuals visit a war-torn realm full of monsters and magic, seeking to fulfill an ancient prophecy.
One night, actor Adem Highlander suffers quite the nightmare. In it, he faces a tunnel of flames, and a raven-haired beauty tells him that he is a Son of Odin. Adem connects the experience with another he had years ago at a place called Bright, where he and his friends Carl Wilder and William “Wil” Martyr became Witnesses to the reality of ghosts (Adem learned that “ghosts were not imagined, not a mythology. Not some false religious fantasy cooked up to inspire hope or fear in the hearts of mankind”). Later, Adem and his agent, Anna, attend the symphony. There, he has a waking vision of a wizard who asks, “What will be the hour of your arrival, Son of Odin?” The next day, Adem, Carl, and Wil meet model Jean Fairsythe at a photo shoot. Then, the foursome is transported to Kismeria, a kingdom at war with the Dark One and his demonic hordes. Orion, King of the Torvellan, informs them that in 1,000 years they are destined to face the Dark One. Until then, they must train and work against the taint—instilled by the ghosts Witnessed at Bright—that threatens to interfere with their use of the Power. In the opening volume of a complex new fantasy series, Hammer offers readers lavish battles, dizzying amounts of gore, and a system of magical patrons called Battle Angels that fans of the Final Fantasy video games should enjoy. Hammer’s prose is often dense with imagery, as when “Anna, the crew,” and “the bushland were all swallowed by a vortex of light and shadows,” and “the light exploded into tiny filaments of burning gold and white energies.” The battles, during which the Sons of Odin—and Jean, the Daughter of Thor—summon superpowered guardians, are splatterfests (demons are blasted “into dust and smoke, torn flesh and large spurts of dark blood”). Quiet moments involve Adem’s courting of Jean, who believes that love “writes itself upon our every fibre.” Christianity also plays a role, as Carl attempts to convert Kismerian warriors and chides Adem against taking innocent lives. Overall, the action is busier than the plot is satisfying.
A marathon of fantasy gore and slow-building characterizations in a land confronting demons.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Smashwords
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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