Worth a try, even if it’s often more impressive than alluring.
Another highly unusual fantasy (Three Parts Dead, 2012) set in the same carefully constructed, Aztec-inspired world of gods, magic and sacrifice.
Eighty years have passed since Kopil, the King in Red, defeated the gods and established Red King Consolidated to run the city of Dresediel Lex. Now, demons infest the Bright Mirror reservoir, so Kopil sends in Caleb Altemoc, a professional risk manager and sometime gambler, to cleanse the water for the city’s 16 million inhabitants. At Bright Mirror, Caleb comes across the stunning and elusive Mal, a cliff runner (imagine a sort of superparcours). Meanwhile, Caleb’s father, Temoc, the last priest of the old gods, may be involved in the contamination of the water supply. Temoc makes no secret of the fact that he despises Kopil’s magic and methods and yearns to bring back sacrifices to the gods. Since the city continues to grow, its demand for water and power and materials is insatiable, so Kopil is close to a deal merging RKC with Heartstone, a company that supplies power by torturing the Twin Serpents, slumbering fire gods too fearsome ever to be permitted to wake. But when Caleb discovers that Mal is really Heartstone’s most powerful Craftsman, or wizard, he really begins to wonder what’s going on. He fears the Serpents, but neither can he permit Temoc to resurrect his monstrous, murderous dream. Against this dense, highly textured backdrop, the characters evince emotional depth and convincing motives. Yet questions persist: about how the magic works, the source of Kopil’s god-killing powers and how Temoc manages to elude him. In showing us this vast, teeming, contract-bound city buckling under pressure, Gladstone perhaps is offering a metaphor for end-stage capitalism.
Worth a try, even if it’s often more impressive than alluring.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3312-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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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