A hot-tempered heroine and the charmingly undead prove a winning combination.
This urban fantasy debut sees a woman who can control fire take on vampires and witches to save a child.
Diana is a Fire Elemental, capable of harnessing flames as she rides herd on all beings Supernatural. She and the other Elementals—Logan (Air), Gia (Earth), and Serin (Water)—work for Mother Nature to uphold the covenant, which is supposed to keep Supernatural entities from abusing magic. While frequently separated from one another on different missions, the Elementals communicate through the aether. Diana learns that Katie, a young Boston girl she once saved from a child molester, has once again disappeared. Logan tells her that “the wind speaks of vampires.” A proactive badass, Diana crashes the stately Broussard coven house to interrogate the city’s prestigious undead. She reluctantly teams up with the family scion, Alec, whose obsession with archaeology makes him a valuable, if nerdy, Supernatural ally. He’s also a rare Daywalker who, like her, has been searching for a missing child, this one the son of a Broussard family employee. As the clues point to a black circle of witches, the pair investigates New Orleans; Toulouse, France; and, of course, Salem, Massachusetts. In this series opener, Gilbert sends her characters jet-setting and provides excellent background information on each locale. Readers learn, for example, that the principal horrors of the Salem witch trials occurred in Salem Village, now called Danvers. Diana is also a pleasure to spend time with because her sarcasm never falters: “Why do all vampire names sound like they’re out of a bad regency novel?” The romance between her and Alec grows organically, and it’s easy to root for the underdog vamp to win over this fiery heroine. Her myriad powers should entice longtime fantasy readers, as when she studies meteorites and reveals, “I can tell when something is...not of the Mother.” The other Elementals appear in tantalizing snippets that should ready fans for subsequent series volumes.
A hot-tempered heroine and the charmingly undead prove a winning combination.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-942336-10-5
Page Count: 362
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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