High melodrama empowers a cunning tale.
Stackpole sets forth on his new cycle and 34th novel, following the conclusion of the DragonCrown War Cycle (Fortress Draconis, 2001, etc.).
Atlas kicks off with a scene that promises well for the series and is a variation on the Takashi Shimura role as the wise older swordsman of The Seven Samurai. The old swordsman Moraven Tolo, escorting some pilgrims to Moriande, the grandest city in the world, meets three bandits on the very spot where he himself killed three bandits 81 years earlier. He bests the three new ones marvelously, then, rather than kill them, assigns them deeds that will allow them to live. He tells the bandit leader, Payynti, a woman, to go the School of Istor and become a xidantzu for nine years. Will we see her again? The age of black ice that held back discovery has ended and wild magic dimmed. Moriande and its Prince Cyron now depend on the Arturasis, the Royal Cartographers, to lead their ships into uncharted waters. Young Kele Arturasi, engaged to the beauteous but wily Majiata Phoesel, hopes to take her with him on a fresh voyage, but his foxy sister Nirati separates them, and Maj vows revenge. Meanwhile, Moraven’s even older master, Jatan, sends him on a mission to Ixyll, a land warped by wild magic, to save the world. Much political stuff erupts in a babble of odd names that deserve a glossary before the great adventures begin and Kele’s brawling brother Jorim sets sail in Stormwolf to test new cartographical inventions and fill in the blanks on the world map. Grandfather Qiro, chief cartographer, sends Kele off to survey the lost Spice Route, a dangerous job. Moraven, before going on his mission, takes on a student swordsman, Ciras. Ghastly murders take place while Qiro enters alternate worlds, his map coming alive as the invisible cartographer scrawls new routes and lands in blood.
High melodrama empowers a cunning tale.Pub Date: March 8, 2005
ISBN: 0-553-38237-3
Page Count: 462
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful and snarky with surprising emotional depths.
This debut novel, the first of a projected trilogy, blends science fiction, fantasy, gothic chiller, and classic house-party mystery.
Gideon Nav, a foundling of mysterious antecedents, was not so much adopted as indentured by the Ninth House, a nearly extinct noble necromantic house. Trained to fight, she wants nothing more than to leave the place where everyone despises her and join the Cohort, the imperial military. But after her most recent escape attempt fails, she finally gets the opportunity to depart the planet. The heir and secret ruler of the Ninth House, the ruthless and prodigiously talented bone adept Harrowhark Nonagesimus, chooses Gideon to serve her as cavalier primary, a sworn bodyguard and aide de camp, when the undying Emperor summons Harrow to compete for a position as a Lyctor, an elite, near-immortal adviser. The decaying Canaan House on the planet of the absent Emperor holds dark secrets and deadly puzzles as well as a cheerfully enigmatic priest who provides only scant details about the nature of the competition...and at least one person dedicated to brutally slaughtering the competitors. Unsure of how to mix with the necromancers and cavaliers from the other Houses, Gideon must decide whom among them she can trust—and her doubts include her own necromancer, Harrow, whom she’s loathed since childhood. This intriguing genre stew works surprisingly well. The limited locations and narrow focus mean that the author doesn’t really have to explain how people not directly attached to a necromantic House or the military actually conduct daily life in the Empire; hopefully future installments will open up the author’s creative universe a bit more. The most interesting aspect of the novel turns out to be the prickly but intimate relationship between Gideon and Harrow, bound together by what appears at first to be simple hatred. But the challenges of Canaan House expose other layers, beginning with a peculiar but compelling mutual loyalty and continuing on to other, more complex feelings, ties, and shared fraught experiences.
Suspenseful and snarky with surprising emotional depths.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31319-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.
In the first volume of a trilogy, a fresh cataclysm besets a physically unstable world whose ruling society oppresses its most magically powerful inhabitants.
The continent ironically known as the Stillness is riddled with fault lines and volcanoes and periodically suffers from Seasons, civilization-destroying tectonic catastrophes. It’s also occupied by a small population of orogenes, people with the ability to sense and manipulate thermal and kinetic energy. They can quiet earthquakes and quench volcanoes…but also touch them off. While they’re necessary, they’re also feared and frequently lynched. The “lucky” ones are recruited by the Fulcrum, where the brutal training hones their powers in the service of the Empire. The tragic trap of the orogene's life is told through three linked narratives (the link is obvious fairly quickly): Damaya, a fierce, ambitious girl new to the Fulcrum; Syenite, an angry young woman ordered to breed with her bitter and frighteningly powerful mentor and who stumbles across secrets her masters never intended her to know; and Essun, searching for the husband who murdered her young son and ran away with her daughter mere hours before a Season tore a fiery rift across the Stillness. Jemisin (The Shadowed Sun, 2012, etc.) is utterly unflinching; she tackles racial and social politics which have obvious echoes in our own world while chronicling the painfully intimate struggle between the desire to survive at all costs and the need to maintain one’s personal integrity. Beneath the story’s fantastic trappings are incredibly real people who undergo intense, sadly believable pain.
With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-22929-6
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
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