A decidedly improved outing, much more inventive and involving than the previous.
Another entry in Rawn’s fantasy series (Thornlost, 2014, etc.) about a magical theater company in a sort-of Elizabethan, multispecies setting.
For more than two years, Cade, the heart of theater troupe Touchstone, has consciously denied and rejected his prescient visions, or “Elsewhens,” out of a misplaced desire to be more like everybody else. As a result, Touchstone has lost its creative edge, and tensions between Cade and the other players—Mieka, Jeska and Rafe—cause grumbling and dissent. Finally, Mieka confronts Cade and forces him to admit that denying his gift is destroying both himself and the troupe. Meanwhile, in other developments, somebody’s experimenting with using magic to blow things up—but why? Cade learns that his younger brother, Dery, has the magic ability to detect gold—a very dangerous talent. Touchstone finds that their agent is not, perhaps, the most reliable of folk. Princess Miriuzca’s brother, Ilesko—they’re both from a land that rejects the use of magic—presents a play without magic (a thinly disguised Faust) and impresses Touchstone despite their skepticism. Then, in one of his Elsewhens, Cade sees the royal castle exploding. He knows the futures he glimpses can be changed. But who would believe him? His deadly enemy, the Archduke Cyed Henick, that’s who. The plotting and politics are well-managed if somewhat thin and shadowy. Readers will already be thoroughly familiar with the background. And the youthful characters do begin to develop some maturity, though their performances are still fueled by drugs, with heavy drinking and more drugs to relax.
A decidedly improved outing, much more inventive and involving than the previous.Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7734-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
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
A somewhat fragmentary nocturnal shadows Jim Nightshade and his friend Will Halloway, born just before and just after midnight on the 31st of October, as they walk the thin line between real and imaginary worlds. A carnival (evil) comes to town with its calliope, merry-go-round and mirror maze, and in its distortion, the funeral march is played backwards, their teacher's nephew seems to assume the identity of the carnival's Mr. Cooger. The Illustrated Man (an earlier Bradbury title) doubles as Mr. Dark. comes for the boys and Jim almost does; and there are other spectres in this freakshow of the mind, The Witch, The Dwarf, etc., before faith casts out all these fears which the carnival has exploited... The allusions (the October country, the autumn people, etc.) as well as the concerns of previous books will be familiar to Bradbury's readers as once again this conjurer limns a haunted landscape in an allegory of good and evil. Definitely for all admirers.
Pub Date: June 15, 1962
ISBN: 0380977273
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962
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