A reader gets lost in a book, literally, in Ford’s (Zoey Avenger, 2014, etc.) fantasy romance.
Meet Naia, a self-described “introverted hermit” who prefers the company of fictional characters to real people—at least in theory. After her fiancé dumps her for another woman, Naia takes solace in her favorite author’s newest book, an unfinished adventure starring the Shadow Knight, a sexy, ruthless warrior on a mission to strike down 10 kingdoms and a 1,000-year curse in the warring lands of Black Moon Draw. After a night of reading and lots of wine, Naia awakens trapped in those very lands. There, the Shadow Knight insists that she is his battle-witch, a revered magical woman who can determine and influence the outcomes of battles. But Naia doesn’t know how to invoke her magic, nor does she believe this land is even real. Is it a dream? And if not, how can she return home? Gradually, Naia realizes that this adventure is her chance to start over, to shed her meek former self and become a hero—if she can overcome self-doubt and kick-start her magic. In the midst of all this, there’s a “dangerous attraction” between her and the mysterious, oh-so-manly Shadow Knight, who might not be such a bad guy after all. Though the end of this story is unsurprising, the route there is well-executed. Ford has created an exciting, fast-paced tale and a relatable, flawed character whose reactions to her circumstances are genuine and comical. Alas, the juicy sexual tension between Naia and the knight builds and builds but peaks with a vague, incomplete sex scene. Ford also explores the relationship between a writer and her readers: Naia has an ongoing one-sided discussion with LF, the author of the book she’s been pulled into. She wonders about LF’s choices, predicts what will happen next and even mocks spelling errors. The latter is a bit ironic, as Ford has missed a few typos and misspellings herself.
Bibliophiles may envy the protagonist in this fun, if predictable, story within a story.
Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the...
Brown presents the second installment of his epic science-fiction trilogy, and like the first (Red Rising, 2014), it’s chock-full of interpersonal tension, class conflict and violence.
The opening reintroduces us to Darrow au Andromedus, whose wife, Eo, was killed in the first volume. Also known as the Reaper, Darrow is a lancer in the House of Augustus and is still looking for revenge on the Golds, who are both in control and in the ascendant. The novel opens with a galactic war game, seemingly a simulation, but Darrow’s opponent, Karnus au Bellona, makes it very real when he rams Darrow’s ship and causes a large number of fatalities. In the main narrative thread, Darrow has infiltrated the Golds and continues to seek ways to subvert their oppressive and dominant culture. The world Brown creates here is both dense and densely populated, with a curious amalgam of the classical, the medieval and the futuristic. Characters with names like Cassius, Pliny, Theodora and Nero coexist—sometimes uneasily—with Daxo, Kavax and Sevro. And the characters inhabit a world with a vaguely medieval social hierarchy yet containing futuristic technology such as gravBoots. Amid the chronological murkiness, one thing is clear—Darrow is an assertive hero claiming as a birthright his obligation to fight against oppression: "For seven hundred years we have been enslaved….We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light." Stirring—and archetypal—stuff.
Comparisons to The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series are inevitable, for this tale has elements of both—fantasy, the future and quasi-historicism.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53981-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
Though his scenarios aren’t always plausible in strictest terms, King’s imagination, as always, yields a most satisfying...
King (Under the Dome, 2009, etc.) adds counterfactual historian to his list of occupations.
Well, not exactly: The author is really turning in a sturdy, customarily massive exercise in time travel that just happens to involve the possibility of altering history. Didn’t Star Trek tell us not to do that? Yes, but no matter: Up in his beloved Maine, which he celebrates eloquently here (“For the first time since I’d topped that rise on Route 7 and saw Dery hulking on the west bank of the Kenduskeag, I was happy”), King follows his own rules. In this romp, Jake Epping, a high-school English teacher (vintage King, that detail), slowly comes to see the opportunity to alter the fate of a friend who, in one reality, is hale and hearty but in another dying of cancer, no thanks to a lifetime of puffing unfiltered cigarettes. Epping discovers a time portal tucked away in a storeroom—don’t ask why there—and zips back to 1958, where not just his friend but practically everyone including the family pets smokes: “I unrolled my window to get away from the cigarette smog a little and watched a different world roll by.” A different world indeed: In this one, Jake, a sort of sad sack back in Reality 1, finds love and a new identity in Reality 2. Not just that, but he now sees an opportunity to unmake the past by inserting himself into some ugly business involving Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, various representatives of the military-industrial-intelligence complex and JFK in Dallas in the fall of 1963. It would be spoiling things to reveal how things turn out; suffice it to say that any change in Reality 2 will produce a change in Reality 1, not to mention that Oswald may have been a patsy, just as he claimed—or maybe not. King’s vision of one outcome of the Kennedy assassination plot reminds us of what might have been—that is, almost certainly a better present than the one in which we’re all actually living. “If you want to know what political extremism can lead to,” warns King in an afterword, “look at the Zapruder film.”
Though his scenarios aren’t always plausible in strictest terms, King’s imagination, as always, yields a most satisfying yarn.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2728-2
Page Count: 864
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
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