Epic, Wagnerian space opera that perhaps might have benefited from a few more liner notes.
In an SF–fantasy debut, adventurers, pirates, villains, hunters, and fugitives careen around a galaxy in search of powerful ancient artifacts.
Digman and Roddy, a husband-and-wife writing team, make their debut with a robust but complicated combination of science fiction and high fantasy, in which crumbling castles and dragons and wraiths share the stage with ray guns and spaceships. It takes place in the aftermath of a traumatic, galaxy-rending war between a pantheon of gods and entities of primordial evil called the Qur Noc. Now, rival space-going human kingdoms, uneasily at peace, scheme and skirmish using faster-than-light ships and “T-Gate” transport points—alien technology that mankind doesn’t even fully comprehend. However, these struggles merely provide background as potentially cosmos-shattering events happen in secret and on off-limits or outlaw worlds. Fall Arden, a freelance Ranger with a mystical sword and an automated quiver of multifunctional arrows, is one of several relentless characters taking part in a violent quest for ancient artifacts, which include a crystalline World Shard and a glyph that can tap into forbidden, ancient power. Another quester is Sidna, an “arcanist” or sorceress who’s one of a tribe of mages that defy the widespread, violent religion of Elcos. A Darth Vader–like Elcosian named Tieger, a fanatic in powered armor, serves aboard the fearsome dreadnaught Forge, and Ban Morgan is a soldier in one of the competing empires who took the blame for an atrocity committed by a prince in his squad and wants to redeem himself. There are also space pirates, a shape-shifting robot, an alien “voidstrider,” and other players. The various members of the ensemble cross paths, often violently, on doomed starships, in pocket universes, and in death-haunted temples.
Fantasy fans will easily recognize and savor the novel’s echoes of, tributes to, and occasional quotations from the Lord of the Rings series, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the His Dark Materials books, H.P. Lovecraft’s works, TV’s Babylon 5, and, of course, all things George Lucas. However, the tale doesn’t feel as derivative as other contemporary SF–fantasy fare thanks to its narrative assurance, its ability to set up characters on a mythic scale, and its tendency to keep key details tantalizingly opaque. Hermes, a shape-shifting “artificial lifeform” of obscure origins who accompanies Fall, serves as a literal deus ex machina; he gets the protagonists out of seemingly hopeless jams, much as R2-D2 and Gandalf did in works that provided the novel’s inspiration. Some readers may wonder at the fact that major characters take incredible physical punishments and easily bounce back from grievous wounds while armies of ill-fated extras are summarily ripped asunder by bullets, blades, beams, or ravenous monsters. However, the action rarely stops, the mayhem is vividly rendered, and readers are treated to multiple plot twists and cliffhangers over the course of the book. Readers should be prepared to memorize a lot of names and Dungeons & Dragons–style esoterica, though; judging from closing pages, there may well be a sequel.
Epic, Wagnerian space opera that perhaps might have benefited from a few more liner notes.Pub Date: July 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73426-142-4
Page Count: 519
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Surprisingly hopeful at the last, but despite careful worldbuilding and tense plotting, the book barely escapes being a slog.
In the conclusion to a trilogy that began with The Justice of Kings (2022) and The Tyranny of Faith (2023), Justice Sir Konrad Vonvalt and his clerk, Helena Sedanka, prepare for a final confrontation with the zealot Bartholomew Claver.
Declared traitors to the Sovan Empire, Sir Konrad and Helena (our narrator) are both on the run and in search of an army to destroy Claver, who is bent on Imperial rule; the demonic entity who grants him dark magicks has more ambitious designs on the entire mortal plane. Somehow, Helena is the key to halting these wider plans, which marks her out for special attention from demonic and angelic beings. Meanwhile, Sir Konrad, whom Helena had previously revered (and loved) as a paragon of the law, does more and more legally and ethically dubious things to save his Empire from Claver, Claver’s fanatic followers, and his demonic allies/puppeteers, including deposing the Emperor and taking up forbidden magicks. How many principles will these two have to compromise to defeat this overwhelming evil? It's interesting to see how this trilogy, while consistently maintaining a grimdark tone, has slowly shifted subgenres over the three volumes. The first book was primarily a fantasy mystery, the second a political fantasy, and the third more of an epic fantasy featuring an ultimate battle between the forces of good and evil. Overall, the series is an intriguing chronicle of one woman’s struggle to develop agency, despite the overpowering influence of her mentor’s strong personality, vast political and religious currents, and, ultimately, gods and demons from other planes of existence. We know that Helena survives these (mis)adventures, since she narrates the entire saga as an old woman looking back; the unrelenting onslaught of terrible things that happen to her before the thankfully cathartic climax may either grind the reader down or cause the reader to disengage from her plight(s), aware that despite her many, many brushes with death and multiple turning points where she believes she chose poorly, she will ultimately prevail.
Surprisingly hopeful at the last, but despite careful worldbuilding and tense plotting, the book barely escapes being a slog.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780316361989
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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