A delightfully cacophonous novel, teeming with character.
Tidhar's latest offering transports readers to a liminal otherworld of spaghetti Western pastiche.
Somewhere, in some city, a nameless man attends his dying son's bedside, powerless to save the boy. Desperate to find a cure, he slips into the Escapement: a Western world of maniacal whimsy populated by bounty hunters, stone giants, mimes, and clowns. Here, the ghost of John Wayne Gacy becomes a bloodthirsty giant, and P.T. Barnum is recast as a clown-enslaving general. The man, known in the Escapement as the Stranger, is not alone; most of the people in this weird desert come there from the real world by way of dream, drink, or death. Studded with features like the Big Rock Candy Mountains and the Desert de Soleil, the land bears intimate connections to the dying boy in the hospital bed—a boy who loves the circus and its clowns—and it's here that the Stranger hopes to find his son a panacea: Ur-shanabi, the Plant of Heartbeat. In keeping with its roots in midcentury Westerns, Tidhar's novel casts the Escapement's clowns as Native American analogs, turning the Stranger into their White savior and avenger, a man who knows that "one should never be unkind to clowns." The author draws from an eclectic mix of sources to create a dazzling story that is more than the sum of its parts, and much of the fun of reading it comes from recognizing its homages. Knowledgeable readers will notice shades of Stephen King, Lewis Carroll, and Westworld here, and Tidhar himself cites Z. Ariel's fairy tale, "The Heart of the Golden Flower," the Epic of Gilgamesh, Salvador Dalí, tarot cards, and Sergio Leone as particular sources of inspiration.
A delightfully cacophonous novel, teeming with character.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-61696-327-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Tachyon
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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