From Lackey (with Bill Dixon, The Black Gryphon, 1993) a starter for yet another sword-and-sorcery trilogy set, like her Mage Winds books, in Valdemar, though only experts will know where, chronologically, this one fits in. Charliss ``the Immortal,'' Adept and Emperor of the Eastern Empire, dreams of conquering the West. However, his armies have been fought to a standstill in Hardorn, so he sends his putative successor, the Grand Duke Tremane, to remedy matters and complete the conquest. In neighboring Karse, meanwhile, the new High Priest, Solaris, has cast forth the evil demon- summoners, child-burners, and False Sons. And though for centuries the Karsites have demonized Valdemar's Herald-Mages and their horselike Companions, Solaris sends the powerful mage Ulrich and his secretary, Karal, to the Valdemaran Court. Here the long, slow process of forging a magical alliance to defeat the Eastern Empire gets underway, while violent storms sent by Tremane roll across the land. Valdemar devotees who delight in description and chat and the absence of action should feel perfectly at home. Non-fans and browsers will simply yawn and pass on.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-88677-611-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: DAW/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1994
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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