More and more scattershot, as memories of the firmly grounded, tightly knit, charming series opener recede into the murk.
Third entry in Carroll's urban fantasy series, following the somnambulistic The Watchtower (2011).
This time, the pace picks up to a frantic pitch, with so much going on it’s hard to follow, let alone become involved. First-person narrator and Watchtower Garet James, heir to a sort of anti-evil witch coven, succeeded in bringing her love, poet Will Hughes, from 17th-century London to 21st-century Paris. Unfortunately, he’s the wrong version—she really wanted the charismatic vampire that young Will, 400 years later, will become. However, we soon learn, through numerous omniscient narrative threads, that elder Will is also around, having become de-vampired, and now is a well-known and highly proficient currency trader. But with both Wills in the world at the same time, elder Will’s losing his immunity to the sun, while young Will’s in danger of becoming destabilized in time. Throw in some fairies, Johannes Kepler (don’t ask), the Institut Chronologique—whose Knights Temporal can travel through time and whose mission is to preserve the current timeline—and bad guys ranging from evil sorcerer John Dee and his boss, the monstrous vampire and Babylonian ex-god Marduk, to the Malefactors, time travelers intent on changing things around to suit themselves. You can imagine the size and shape of the plot necessary to accommodate all this, let alone the effort needed to determine if it adds up. Swaggering, pill-popping Marduk, twanging his fangs and twirling his mustachio (well, figuratively, anyway), would have been a star on the vaudeville stage. Instead of poetry, we’re served limp doggerel.
More and more scattershot, as memories of the firmly grounded, tightly knit, charming series opener recede into the murk.Pub Date: March 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2599-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Another entry in the series (Mother of Winter, 1996, etc.) about a world where both magic and science (e.g., clones, transporters) work, and where two Earth people, the mage Rudy and the warrior Gil, have taken up residence. The Keep of Dare, imbued with the magic of a powerful mage, hosts two travelers who claim to be searching for old machines that can help in the battle against the Dark Ones. One of them turns out to be the evil sorcerer Bektis; the pair then snatch young Prince Tir and flee. After a magical struggle in which Rudy is severely injured, the Icefalcon— a barbarian warrior of the Talking Stars People, now somewhat civilized—pursues the twosome and their puppet-master, the hook- handed, unspeakable Vair na-Chandros. The Icefalcon will need high- powered magical help, in the person of his sister, Cold Death; still, he'll eventually become disembodied, beset by demons, and trapped inside the dread Keep of Shadow. Once again, some intriguing ideas embedded in a standard fantasy backdrop and plot, peopled by chortling, banal villains: should please series fans.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-39724-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1997
Antieau's amorphous debut, having no truck with orthodox novelistic ambitions, takes the form of an extended feminist polemic. Keelie, still healing and unable to talk yet, awakens to the realization that she's a composite of three distinct individuals, surgically fused together. Her head once belonged to drowned Anna, her body is that of poor murdered Bella, while her dancer's legs derive from suicide Lee. Keelie has been created by Victor to be his lover, and she's attended by timid medic Griffin, psychiatrist Hart, and Lilith, Victor's deformed wife. All of these people, as the young woman's experiences unfold, are shown to be related by blood or marriage, through space and time. Indeed, Keelie relives something of the miserable lives and sad deaths of the women whose hybrid she is. But before long she's seized by the death-goddess, Eriskegal, and commanded to remember everything. Soon Keelie recalls a time in the South American rain forests around the advent of Columbus, where she and the others live in idyllic circumstances—until a ship bringing Victor's brutal and domineering father arrives to kill or enslave them all. Later, in a prehistorical matriarchy beset by vicious patriarchal invaders, Keelie must persuade her warrior lover, Victor, to reject his father and his horrific conquests. Finally, as she remembers all the reincarnations of her composites, Keelie becomes Eriskegal. A powerful and impressive statement, with lots of complicated scenarios, relationships, and symbols, though descriptive rather than prescriptive.
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-451-45509-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: ROC/Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1996
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