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
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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