Continuing the blended fantasy/science fiction adventures of Stover's homicidal antihero (Caine Black Knife, 2008, etc.).
If you're unfamiliar with the Caine saga, the first 100 pages offer a rapid-shuffle blur of riotous confusion, but patient readers eventually will grasp that the near-future Earth is a disastrously overpopulated, caste-ridden dictatorship whose instrument of control is the dreaded Social Police. The downtrodden masses dream of escaping to Overworld, a planet accessible via advanced technology where magic works and fantasy tropes like dragons and elves are real. However, only Actors trained in violence and magic, equipped with “thoughtmitters” that beam back virtual-reality live access to their experiences, get to go there. Actor Caine, under multiple identities, has been making mayhem at his sponsors' bidding for more than 50 years, battling gods, demons, enemies and friends alike. Perpetually bruised and battered, he survives only through healing magic and his indomitable will. When we first meet him, he's a prisoner and crippled, about to receive an infusion of black-oil god-ichor. Eventually, however, he will meet the horse-witch, a mysteriously gifted immortal who remembers everything, even events that have "unhappened," and whom various factions want to kill. The horse-witch, in passages of remarkable tenderness, helps Caine begin to understand the turmoil of conflicting impulses and rage that form his soul—and that, contrary to popular belief, what matters is not gods deserving of better people, but that people deserve better gods. And when he discovers that reality itself has been altered, he decides it's time to make some changes of his own. Expect multiple plot threads that loop wildly and unpredictably between past and present, expletive-laden dialogue, havoc, torture and mass destruction. For starters. Brutal, witty, insightful, addictive, frequently baffling and altogether astonishing.
Pub Date: April 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-345-45589-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
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
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