Strong characters face a maelstrom in this intense, intellectually rigorous fantasy series finale.
In this third installment of a series, a group of heroes confronts a formidable demon who wants to thwart societal progress.
Four years after eliminating the mad professor Keith Euyn, Sir Robert Endicott and his fellow Knights of Vercors continue to shape a better world. Their ambitious and dangerous Lighthouse plan would tame the Ardgour Wilderness that lies beyond the fields of the New School’s genetically engineered grain. The Knights, including Sir Eloise Kyre and Lord Gregory Justice, must help push back the skolves (humanoid wolves) and potentially battle the demons Skoll and Hati. Other key components of the mission are testing the Javelin communication system and eventually finding the lost Bifrost Bridge connecting all to the ethereal Methueyn Knights. Accomplishing these objectives will require the Knights’ dynamicist skills, which manipulate thermodynamics to alter probabilities. But the use of these abilities typically summons demons. Dynamicist Heylor Style knows their wrath well. His team of eight died fighting otherworldly monstrosities in the wilderness. He’s now back in Vercors, partnered with the understanding and even-tempered Constable Lynwen. He finds himself instantly smitten with her. They investigate a series of strange hangings, appearances by a cloaked man, and yet more protests at the New School. People once again prove distrusting of scientific solutions, this time a vaccine for goose fever. The real danger is that any instance of true scientific invention will bring forth Nimrheal, the demon who punishes innovators. Little does Robert realize that he and his love, Koria Valcourt, have already been punished. She suffered a stillbirth and fails to tell him before he leaves for an operation.
This final volume of Hunt’s fantasy trilogy bursts at the seams with notions of science, spirituality, and politics pertaining to the 21st-century political climate. He underlines a main theme of his series—that progressive society must remain vigilant against ignorance—by including vaccines, the bugaboo of conspiracy-minded parents, in the plot. Nimrheal is a literal beast to slay, but he also represents the amorphous forces of disinformation and dogma that plague industrialized nations. And while it’s true that “bad people succeeded because they were allowed to,” as Eloise believes, sometimes evil “had no face, no armor, certainly no name. There was no rational knowledge or true understanding of it to be had.” Notably intertwined with these epic happenings are Heylor’s personal struggles. He suffers an ever diminishing sense of self after running from a fight and losing his soldiers. When Lynwen accepts Heylor’s embarrassing family, he becomes attached to her. Readers also learn that Heylor used to bully someone in his youth and still harbors shame, despite outgrowing such abhorrent behavior. His grounded character arc is exceptional, as he’s surrounded by others, like Robert and Eloise, who seem like perfect heroes. These last two deliver plenty of straightforward fantasy action, as when “Eloise put her entire body into a ferocious lateral strike that cut the skolve in half at the waist.” But the unique pulse of this series remains the author’s dedication to thematic sprawl and a hard-science magic system.
Strong characters face a maelstrom in this intense, intellectually rigorous fantasy series finale. (character guide)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9990935-4-9
Page Count: 504
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 13, 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
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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