A philosophically minded series opener that deftly merges science, fantasy, and college life.
In this fantasy debut, a young farmer attends an elite school for those skilled in manipulating the laws of thermodynamics.
Eighteen-year-old Robert Endicott of Bron has been chosen for Duchess Lady Brice’s “Applied Mathematics and Physics” program at the New School. Though his parents are dead, Robert lives with loving grandparents. Finlay, his Grandpa, experienced a “heraldic” dream that confirmed the teen would be accepted and so he moves to Vercors, the capital. Uncle Arrayn escorts Robert on the journey, and they stop in the town of Nyhmes, where the teen witnesses grain futures exchanged and ponders the advantages of his Grandpa's heraldry. In Vercors, two young women threaten to steal his baggage. They are Eloise Kyre and Koria Valcourt, fellow classmates at the New School, who only tease him. On campus, Robert meets dorm mates Davyn Daly, Lord Gregory Justice, and Heylor Style, among others. While he hopes to enjoy a forward-looking career as a student and innovator, Robert nevertheless becomes embroiled in his classmates’ questionable behavior. He discovers quickly that one of them is a compulsive thief and another, a misanthropic drunk. One night, a student is sexually assaulted, and the fallout threatens to derail the program. The upside to this chaos is that Robert falls in love with Koria, who reciprocates. There’s little danger, it seems, that he’ll become like the title character of his favorite book, The Lonely Wizard. Hunt’s series starter offers a grounded, scientifically detailed answer to the Harry Potter universe. “Wizards and dynamicists do the same thing,” instructor Keith Euyn says. “One has an intuitive, spontaneous gift, the other a managed, quantitative process.” This premise makes for occasionally dense prose that genre fans may need patience navigating. The most captivating plot element, murmuring in the background, is that of Nimrheal, a supposedly vanquished demon who kills those who innovate. Extensive flashbacks sometimes disrupt the tale’s flow, like the one immediately following Eloise and Koria’s introduction. But narrative hiccups are balanced by excellent lines like “Perhaps people would rather the world was changed than change themselves.” A disturbing heraldic dream ably sets up the sequel.
A philosophically minded series opener that deftly merges science, fantasy, and college life.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9990935-0-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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