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THE DESTRUCTION OF THE BOOKS

Though curiously lacking female characters, Odom's bouncy, funny, cliff-hanger adventure is perfect for the Potter crowd,...

A new story and start of a series set in the world of Odom’s witty, enjoyable, action-filled hardcover fantasy debut (The Rover, 2001).

Liberated from goblin slavers by Edgewick the Lamplighter, the bookish librarian and “dweller” hero of The Rover, Juhg, another dweller, has grown bored with duties as an apprentice librarian inside the vast Vault of All Known Knowledge and has put to sea with his human buddy Raisho. Known aboard ship as a scribbler, Juhg spends his off hours writing in a notebook, sketching what happens to him, when he hears a rumor of a book in the possession of a mysterious goblin ship. Goblins aren’t known for their literary tastes and, books being rarities, Juhg and Raisho plot to overtake the ship and steal this one. After more than a hundred pages of swordplay, spell-casting, dueling with a supernatural snake and an evil wizard, they succeed and deliver the book to Edgewick, now Grandmagister of the Library. Examining the book, Edgewick and the wizard Craugh discover that it’s literally accursed: the pages open a magical gate through which tumble Dread Riders, Blazebulls, and Grymmlings, disgusting sprites that eat anything and everything. In battling the spell, Juhg, Edgewick, and Craugh uproot the library's magical underpinnings, destroying nearly all the books inside. Edgewick charges Juhg with writing a book about the catastrophe. Then off they go to find the source of the evil book, a search leading to apparent catastrophe: Craugh nearly dies, and Edgewick and Juhg are captured by the Goblin Wizard Aldhran. Edgewick reveals to Juhg that Aldhran is searching for the fabled Book of Time, an illuminated volume containing spells so powerful it can unmake the world. A last-minute escape sends Juhg in search of the book, with the goblin wizard close behind.

Though curiously lacking female characters, Odom's bouncy, funny, cliff-hanger adventure is perfect for the Potter crowd, with enough puns, wry asides, and satirical send-ups to amuse Tolkien fans.

Pub Date: July 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-765-30723-5

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Tor

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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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

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THE TESTAMENTS

Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.

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Atwood goes back to Gilead.

The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.

Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Nan A. Talese

Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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