A strangely evocative, smoothly readable tale about lovers dealing with Britannia’s tribes and ancient Rome.
This third installment of a historical fiction series focuses on the tribulations of a Celtic princess and a Roman soldier.
Tanner’s (Dagger’s Destiny, 2018, etc.) latest volume in her Curse of Clansmen and Kings series chronicles not only a forbidden love, but a clash of ancient civilizations as well. The time is A.D. 24; the settings include Roman-occupied Britannia and Gaul; and the narrative follows Catrin, a Celtic warrior princess. In previous entries, readers have watched as Catrin indulged in a forbidden love affair with Roman soldier Marcellus, the son of Roman envoy Lucius Antonius. The author threw every conceivable complication in the path of her star-crossed lovers, from tribal warfare and supernatural Druidic prophecy to filial duty, which called on Catrin to defend her father’s kingdom from both the forces of the Roman Empire and the schemes of her own banished half-brother. This volume finds Catrin at a low point: She’s been enslaved by a Roman commander who sees her (and her purported mystical connection to the god Apollo) as a key to his own ambitious climb. Her lover Marcellus has had his memories of their relationship magically suppressed. Catrin is living in Roman encampments disguised as a young man named Vibius, a medical assistant grudgingly endured by the soldiers around him. The book’s action shifts frequently from the Roman frontiers to Rome itself, following its two main characters and a well-realized assortment of secondary players through a narrative liberally peppered with both local intrigues and tense action scenes. Catrin, Tanner’s central fictional creation, continues to deepen in complexity and elicit audience sympathy; her character is often refreshingly relatable. This is usually true of her paramour Marcellus, whose adventures readers follow in Rome and Gaul. But when scenes feature the two of them together, the author can sometimes yield to the kind of breathless, purple prose typically connected in most readers’ minds with a segment of the romance genre: “The heat from her body warmed his. He couldn’t let go, hearing her moans of arousal.” One of the novel’s most ambitious gambits is its richly atmospheric blending of supernatural elements into the broader story. The tale features ghosts, animal familiars, shapeshifters, and all kinds of spiritual communications, and Tanner’s skill at interweaving these elements is shown by how seamless the whole process feels. The book’s glimpses of the world of the frontier Roman army also mostly ring true, with tensions between Marcellus and his men uniformly well drawn, particularly on the several occasions when the savagery of the soldier’s own enlisted men shocks him (“The stark reality that mutilated bodies were all around him finally struck him like a brick”). This kind of fidelity to research will please readers familiar with this period of Rome’s occupation of Britain (they will likely be hunting for a mention of the legendary British resistance fighter Boudicca, and they won’t be disappointed). This is a strong entry in Tanner’s enjoyable series.
A strangely evocative, smoothly readable tale about lovers dealing with Britannia’s tribes and ancient Rome.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9982300-7-8
Page Count: 347
Publisher: Apollo Raven Publisher, LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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