A yarn that, with its second novel woes, trips, staggers, and recovers, ultimately to delight and enthrall.
The second installment of Turner’s projected fantasy trilogy (Red Tide, 2016, etc.), wherein, disconcertingly, perhaps even disappointingly, none of the previous characters or locales reappear.
It’s not all gloom and doom, though. This time, a power struggle among the ruling water-mages of the Storm Isles, backed by another swarming if less engaging supporting cast, develops complications in a dazzling new setting. Imerle Polivar, emira (leader) of the Storm Council, must retire from her position. She’s already plotting, however, to destroy the other Storm Lords and rule forever. Rapidly approaching is the annual sea dragon hunt—a bizarre and horrifyingly dangerous ritual that Imerle intends to twist to her own ends, blind to the fact that her most powerful rival, Mazana Creed, is plotting a coup. Another Guardian, Senar Sol, has been sent into exile via a magical gateway by an emperor who seemingly wants the Guardians destroyed altogether. Not one but two assassins show up to kill Imerle, one a curiously bright-eyed woman, the other a man with skin that resembles granite and powerful water-magic—but did Mazana really send them both? And who, or what, is the stone-skinned stranger? The whole thing culminates in a titanic brouhaha involving ships, a ruinous battle whose setting is a subaqueous palace maintained by Storm Lord magic, sharks, dragons, and what-all. Not the tightly focused, relentless all-actioner that the previous book was, it takes a few hundred pages to get going, has persistent flabby patches, and the power struggle’s on a personal rather than a desperately existential level. But there are still plenty of surprises, stunningly inventive magics, witty dialogue, and flashes of bleak humor amid the carnage.
A yarn that, with its second novel woes, trips, staggers, and recovers, ultimately to delight and enthrall.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3713-9
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Second entry in Hobb's fantasy series about the Six Duchies and their Farseer kings (Assassin's Apprentice, 1995). At Buckkeep, King Shrewd lies dying, attended only the by the faithful, enigmatic Fool; King in Waiting Verity spends all his time Skilling to befuddle and bemuse the dreaded Red Ship Raiders, while his beautiful, neglected wife, Kettricken, wanders disconsolately. Young FitzChivalry, still ailing after his previous mission, tries to serve both Shrewd and Verity while seeking ways to frustrate the vaulting ambitions of Shrewd's youngest son, the viperous Prince Regal. Shrewd, meantime, has forbidden poor Fitz to marry his beloved Molly, a commoner. Fitz also possesses the Wit, an ability to talk to and empathize with animals, and he bonds with a young wolf he rescues from cruel captivity. Verity builds his own warships, but still can't defeat the Raiders—and the weaker Verity grows, the more the people listen to Regal's treacherous murmurings. Finally, Verity goes into the mountains seeking the Elderlings, a godlike race that helped a previous Farseer king to defeat the Raiders, leaving Fitz to protect Kettricken and Shrewd. Another spellbinding installment, built of patient detail, believable characters, and mature plotting—though, at an unwarranted 608 pages, there are ominous signs that Hobb's beginning to lose control of her narrative.
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-553-37563-6
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
For die-hard mermaid-fiction lovers only.
When a young librarian comes into possession of the diary of a traveling circus from more than 200 years ago, he decides the book may hold clues to a family mystery he needs to solve to save his sister’s life.
Narrator Simon and his younger sister, Enola, grew up in an 18th-century house on a bluff overlooking Long Island Sound. Taking after her mother, a former circus performer who drowned herself when Simon was 7, Enola travels with a carnival as a tarot card reader. Simon is still living in their dangerously dilapidated family home when, out of the blue on one June day, he receives a book from an antiquarian bookseller, who had noticed Simon's grandmother's name inside. Soon Simon discovers a frightening pattern among his female ancestors, all unnaturally good swimmers, all drowning as young women on July 24. If this “coincidence” sounds a bit far-fetched, it sets the bar for the novel’s credibility. Swyler intercuts Simon’s present drama—intensifying research into the diary’s history, loss of his job at the local library, incipient but already rocky love affair with fellow librarian Alice, return home of Enola, irretrievable collapse of the family manse—with the romantic tragedy of Amos, a traveling circus performer, and Evangeline, an aquatic performer with a guilty secret. Born in the 1780s and abandoned by his parents, Amos is mute when he joins a traveling troupe to perform a disappearing act as a “Wild Boy.” The fortuneteller takes him under her wing, teaching him to read the future. But despite her warnings, he falls for the dangerously mysterious Evangeline. She has his baby girl, and the havoc that follows leads straight to the curse that Simon, a whiny loser, is frantic to solve before someone else dies. A bit fey, even as romantic whimsy.
For die-hard mermaid-fiction lovers only.Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05480-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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