Complex and compelling worldbuilding, with some exciting battle scenes and cunning strategic maneuvers.
An illegally literate rabbit must help defend sapient animals against humans out to steal their speech in this fantasy novel.
In Mankahar lives healer’s apprentice Theo, a short, gray rabbit of almost 17, who has twice been caught breaking the strict taboo against reading, or “word-catching.” Solving an odd puzzle requires Theo to break the taboo a third time, which causes him to be formally ostracized outside the village. But he’s suddenly abducted by Brune, a battle-ax–equipped bear whose mission is to take Theo on a dangerous journey to Mount Mahkah for training as an Ihaktu warrior. The Red Emperor Dorgun seeks total “Pacification”: that is, taking sapience from animals and using them for work, raw materials, and food. Opposing the emperor is his brother, Lord Noshi, and the Order of free animals. With war looming, Noshi believes only someone with the Forbidden Knowledge can turn the tide. Most, including the Order, see reading and writing as sacrilegious—but some “say that if the Library of Elshon is ever found, it may bring back Mankahar’s Golden Age.” If the Order can make a desperate last stand, perhaps Theo and his allies can survive long enough to mount a search for lifesaving answers at the fabled library. Ansley (The Queen and the Dagger, 2016) writes an imaginative good-versus-evil narrative, providing some extra chills and food for thought in the treatment of sapient beasts. Arguably, beasts without language aren’t “mindless,” but it makes sense that horrified sapient animals would see them that way. A few scenes of animal treatment are upsetting. While the animal cultures are captivating (such as the appropriate proverbs; bears say “Why worry about bee stings when you haven’t even found the honey?”), it’s impossible to picture how these beasts can speak, use tools, handle weapons, and get about on two legs because they still seem to have animal forms. The book’s ending raises hopes for a sequel.
Complex and compelling worldbuilding, with some exciting battle scenes and cunning strategic maneuvers.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Writing Rooster Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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