Weis abandons her uncompleted Sovereign Stone Trilogy (Guardians of the Lost, 2001, with Tracy Hickman) to kick off a new solo effort.
The fair virgin Melisande, at 28, is High Priestess in the monastery of the Amazonian order, overlooking and protecting the people of the valley of Seth. Fresh virgin warriors for the order are produced by nine members—called cows—who are kept aside for giving birth (male babies supposedly are given to needy folk in the valley). Her lover is dark-haired Bellona, chief warrior, and her chief enemy in the order is Lucretta, jealous that the current Mistress of Dragons—70, white-haired, and bent—has chosen Melisande to replace her when she dies. As Melisande conducts her morning rites at the Chamber of the Eye, she sees a lone male dragon approaching and alerts the warriors, but the Mistress of Dragons, leading her priestesses in magic spells against the dragon, suddenly collapses, although the marauder is driven off. Centuries before, the Dragon Wars with humans ended and the Parliament of Dragons formed, ruling that dragons must keep from human affairs. Maristara, however, took over Seth and rules there, teaching the humans dragon magic. The only human form to attend the Parliament is Draconas, a warrior male who, as the Parliament’s servant but actually a dragon himself, can think in images along with the dragons. It’s suggested that Draconas be sent to Seth to abduct the Mistress of Dragons and bring her back to help find a way of overcoming Maristara. Draconas hoodwinks Edward, King of Ramsgate, to accompany him to Seth. Draconas and Edward repulse hired assassins on the road, but Draconas determines that Maristara is trafficking in the male babies of the “cows” and has left a door open in Seth’s magic shield.
The bang-up climax finds Melisande giving birth to twins, one wholly human, one half-dragon, as the pot boils for volume two.Pub Date: June 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-765-30468-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | FANTASY | EPIC FANTASY
Did you like this book?
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
10
GET IT
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An almost-but-not-quite-great slavery novel.
12
GET IT
The celebrated author of Between the World and Me (2015) and We Were Eight Years in Power (2017) merges magic, adventure, and antebellum intrigue in his first novel.
In pre–Civil War Virginia, people who are white, whatever their degree of refinement, are considered “the Quality” while those who are black, whatever their degree of dignity, are regarded as “the Tasked.” Whether such euphemisms for slavery actually existed in the 19th century, they are evocatively deployed in this account of the Underground Railroad and one of its conductors: Hiram Walker, one of the Tasked who’s barely out of his teens when he’s recruited to help guide escapees from bondage in the South to freedom in the North. “Conduction” has more than one meaning for Hiram. It's also the name for a mysterious force that transports certain gifted individuals from one place to another by way of a blue light that lifts and carries them along or across bodies of water. Hiram knows he has this gift after it saves him from drowning in a carriage mishap that kills his master’s oafish son (who’s Hiram’s biological brother). Whatever the source of this power, it galvanizes Hiram to leave behind not only his chains, but also the two Tasked people he loves most: Thena, a truculent older woman who practically raised him as a surrogate mother, and Sophia, a vivacious young friend from childhood whose attempt to accompany Hiram on his escape is thwarted practically at the start when they’re caught and jailed by slave catchers. Hiram directly confronts the most pernicious abuses of slavery before he is once again conducted away from danger and into sanctuary with the Underground, whose members convey him to the freer, if funkier environs of Philadelphia, where he continues to test his power and prepare to return to Virginia to emancipate the women he left behind—and to confront the mysteries of his past. Coates’ imaginative spin on the Underground Railroad’s history is as audacious as Colson Whitehead’s, if less intensely realized. Coates’ narrative flourishes and magic-powered protagonist are reminiscent of his work on Marvel’s Black Panther superhero comic book, but even his most melodramatic effects are deepened by historical facts and contemporary urgency.
An almost-but-not-quite-great slavery novel.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-59059-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | HISTORICAL FICTION | FANTASY | HISTORICAL FANTASY
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
