A darkly satisfying novel by a writer with an eye for action and unnerving detail.
In Tuck’s debut fantasy thriller, a spiritual crisis unfolds involving infernal antagonists.
Gerald Ironblood, whose history is as foreboding as his tall physique, is called by the pope to participate in a spiritual task force against demonic entities that may signal the end of days. Specifically, Ironblood and his friend, Thomas Burgess, receive a mission to interview the survivors of a shocking massacre of demon hunters. The pope fears that the killings indicate that the forces of hell, called the Infernals, are growing stronger. The inimitable, cigar-smoking Ironblood sets out to find his seminary classmate, Jacob Paladin, but finds that his old friend has become possessed. The narrative then steps back in time to when Ironblood was a soldier in Germany in 1945 and undertook the arduous, horrifying job of ridding a boy of a malignant spirit that went by the name of Lucifuge Rofocale—an entity who happens to know a great deal about Ironblood. Back in the present, Ironblood teams up with Matthew Paladin, the son of Jacob, in order to do the work assigned to him by the pope. They soon confront the case of a girl who began behaving strangely after a car accident in which her fellow passengers were violently killed. Before long, Ironblood and Matthew travel to Mexico to free another boy from demonic possession and become ensnared in the maniacal, grandiose machinations of a priest named Lammas. The novel features arresting, original details, such as the dialogue spoken by the demon in Matthew’s head, which is set inside angle brackets (“<You little shit eater, I should incinerate you for offering me up like this!>”) and is inventive and disturbing in all the right ways. The adventures of Ironblood and Matthew are never predictable, and the plot is cerebral, primal, and rich with pulse-racing moments, including an exorcism that opens the novel. As the story leaps back and forth in time, it moves just as fluidly between the natural and supernatural realms, providing a fantasy with a high degree of verisimilitude and grit.
A darkly satisfying novel by a writer with an eye for action and unnerving detail.Pub Date: May 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1512045932
Page Count: 170
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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