While mystical elements befit the genre, the relatable human characters make this story indelible.
When a plague begins killing the citizens of a kingdom, the king, queen, and others embark on a quest to find a cure in this fantasy sequel.
Lissandro, prince of the Frozen Mountains, is visiting the kingdom of Trevalden just in time for the winter solstice. It’s a time to celebrate with his friends Louis, the king, and Selen, who’s likely the only male queen in the neighboring countries. But sudden deaths from a mysterious sickness halt the festivities in the kingdom’s capital of Nysa Serin. It’s quickly apparent that further ailing citizens indicate a plague that, based on an autopsy, isn’t one Louis or anyone has seen before. Lissandro suggests traveling to the Ebony Forest, where there’s a magical place that may have answers—and a cure. He and the royal couple join a small group and head north. But their journey proves much longer and more treacherous than they had envisioned. Bodies along the way seem to point to a murderer within the group. This may be the same person who’s possibly feeding information to bandits who have the travelers in their sights. Back in Trevalden, Lords Pembroke and Josselin, both ministers, try to retain order, which is a decidedly arduous task, as someone essentially stages an uprising. Louis hopes that he, Selen, or another can survive with a traitor in the group’s midst. Even if most of them perish, it only takes one individual to return to Trevalden with the cure. Though Carlsson’s (Rising From Dust, 2017) novel has all the ingredients of a fantasy, such as dragons and hints of magic, it’s the interaction between the humans that propels the story. For example, distrust slowly emerges within the traveling group, and there’s a betrayal in Trevalden. It’s an engrossing approach that leads to myriad dynamic characters, all with their own flaws. This includes the royal couple, two men who are unquestionably in love, as evidenced by their few prolonged, occasionally explicit dalliances. But they’re not immune to friction since Selen’s worry about being unable to birth an heir for Louis makes the king believe the queen is unhappy with their relationship. The author’s descriptions are solid but especially vibrant when lingering on the environment: “The melancholic landscape of fields and copses stretched from a vale to the other. Here and there, bound to the sky by their columns of smoke, homesteads curled in the shade of a forest. Brown, hunched figures hustled around like ants on an anthill.” But there’s an unfortunate lack of female characters, with Kilda, part of Louis’ group, the only notable woman. Adding to that is Louis’ insulting the gender by implying Kilda isn’t “respectable” due to her manner of speech and dress and saying her place, as a wife, is at home. Nevertheless, with quite a few deceitful characters in the mix, Carlsson’s tale revolves around ever changing perceptions, and Kilda’s strength is evident before the end.
While mystical elements befit the genre, the relatable human characters make this story indelible.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 711
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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