Fans of Millar’s work, who are legion, won’t object, but newcomers may want to take in their werewolvery by other means.
Life is tough. It’s tougher when you’re a werewolf, or so this lumbering yarn, the third installment in Millar’s (Curse of the Wolf Girl, 2010, etc.) Kalix Werewolf series, assures us.
And not just any old werewolf, but a Scottish werewolf in London, living on the fringe, depressed and drugged. Kalix is just 18, but she’s already killed plenty. In fact, at the top of her “Werewolf Improvement Plan” list of resolutions is the notation, “be less violent.” That’s not so easy to do when a secret sect of werewolf hunters, the Avenaris Guild, is after you and yours. (And why secret? Because werewolf hunters have to be, one guesses.) That, plus the fact that Kalix has drawn werewolf blood, too, in what threatens to develop into a lycanthropic civil war. Whatever the case, she’s a force of, well, supernature: “Her speed and power were abnormal, even by the standards of her fellow werewolves. The madness in battle was just part of her general insanity, according to her detractors”—though it could have something to do with the odd circumstances of her birth as well, with which Millar opens this too-long tome. There are some nice hipster/waif touches in his narrative: Kalix digs the 1970s tough-girl group The Runaways, the humans she falls in with are the pimply arty punks from whom great things may emerge, and the London she inhabits is a playground for all kinds of malevolent critters, including one particularly resourceful fairy. Still, even allowing for all the pop-culture slyness (“The Fire Queen...felt herself to be on the defensive ever since Kabachetka had ingratiated herself with the editor of Vogue by sponsoring the ball”) and pomo irony, there’s not much stuffing in this overstuffed book; the action scenes, though suitably bloody, come too few and too far between, and the principal characters are much too talky for the busily disruptive creatures they are.
Fans of Millar’s work, who are legion, won’t object, but newcomers may want to take in their werewolvery by other means.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59376-537-8
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
A new series starts off with a bang.
A queen and her young daughter are forced to separate and go into hiding when a corrupt politician tries to take over the kingdom.
Queen Cressa of Weirandale is worried about her 8-year-old daughter, the “princella” Cerúlia. The people of Weirandale worship a water spirit, Nargis, who grants each queen a special gift called a Talent. Cressa herself is able to meddle with memories, for example, and her mother possessed supernatural strategic abilities that served her well in battle. Cerúlia, however, appears to have none, because surely her insistence that she can talk to animals is only her young imagination running wild. When Cerúlia’s many pets warn her about assassins creeping into the royal chambers, the girl is able to save herself and her mother. Cressa uses her Talent, which actually extends to forcing anyone to tell her the truth, to root out traitors among the aristocracy, led by the power-hungry Lord Matwyck. Fearing for her daughter’s life and her own, Cressa takes Cerúlia and flees. Thinking Cerúlia will be safer away from her mother, Cressa takes the girl to a kind peasant family and adjusts their memories so they believe Cerúlia is their adopted daughter. Kozloff’s debut is the first of four Nine Realms books, and Tor plans to publish them over just four months. Luckily, the series opener is a strong start, so readers will be grateful for the short wait before Book 2. Kozloff sets a solid stage with glimpses into other characters and nations while keeping the book together with a clear, propulsive plot.
A new series starts off with a bang.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-16854-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
