A highly charged fantasy tale about God-chosen warriors fighting evil forces intent on destruction.
A young man imbued with superpowers must fight to save the world from the man he once thought was his father.
The latest from Platz (Sir Coffin Graves Book 1, 2015) picks up right where the previous book left off: young Collin Graves, formerly a furniture store worker and part-time gravedigger, has had his world shattered by a series of revelations and tragedies. His lifelong nanny, Sylvanna, abruptly leaves him; Henry Davis, the man he once thought was his father, is revealed as Lord Harod Dunraven, the powerful lieutenant of a being named Dymortis, who’s bent on world domination; Jill, a young woman Collin cared for, mysteriously dies; Collin’s friend Patrick is abducted and tortured by Dunraven’s henchmen, the Regulators; and Collin himself is approached by a group calling itself the Challengers that tells him he’s actually the last surviving leader of an ancient bloodline of supernatural beings named Soulmadds, who are intent on thwarting the plans of Dunraven and Dymortis. Under the tutelage of the various remaining Soulmadds (including Sylvanna), Collin starts to master the supernatural powers that he’s begun to manifest, and he learns more about the mission of the Challengers and their allied groups, such as the grass-roots movement of the Fosai. All of them are dedicated to serving God and defeating the designs of the “Adversary,” furthering the well-crafted Christian allegory of the series. As in the previous novel, Platz here presents a thoroughly constructed and often quite exciting fantasy scenario full of high-stakes plot twists, vivid characters, and some well-timed comic relief amid all the end-of-the-world drama. Most of the Challengers feel like types rather than individuals, but Collin himself fascinates more with every chapter, constantly confronted with new information about both himself and the world, frequently forced to adapt his beliefs while trying to maintain some level of sanity. Platz continues to do a first-rate job of crafting a gripping fantasy series that can appeal equally to religious and nonreligious lovers of the genre.
A highly charged fantasy tale about God-chosen warriors fighting evil forces intent on destruction.Pub Date: April 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63505-035-6
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Mill City Press
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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