by Michael James Ploof ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2017
An amusing comic fantasy tale featuring a band of unlikely champions.
A youthful, ambitious, and talent-free apprentice wizard embarks on a dangerous mission in this novel.
Apprentice Murland Kadabra shovels manure and performs menial services at a magical school called Abra Tower. Despite his complete inability to work any sorcery at all (or even grow wizard leaf), Murland is shocked to the core when he is chosen to be one of the Champions of the Dragon. The five Champions are called upon by prophecy to assemble when the fearsome dragon Drak’Noir (with a mile-wide wingspan) returns to Bad Mountain—and Murland is not the only one surprised that he has been selected by Abra Tower’s “Most High Wizard,” Kazimir. Princess Caressa, who secretly harbors forbidden love for Murland, also has no idea why a complete washout would be chosen for the life-changing quest. What neither Murland nor Caressa—nor the apprentice’s traveling companions, overweight ogress Willow, pig-keeping Gibrig the dwarf (who suffers from “humanism”), chivalrous Sir Eldrick (who struggles with alcoholism), and Elven Prince Brannon—suspects is that the prophecy is not of five heroes who will destroy Drak’Noir but rather five victims who will sate her hunger when she devours them alive. The escapades of Murland’s fellowship take the group across the land to encounter Dingleberry the sprite, ferocious masked baby Zuul, Egbert and Margi the Cyclopes, flocks of harpies, and other perils and curiosities. Their journey takes them not just into the teeth of adventure, but also forces them to learn and grow. Ploof’s (Exodus, 2016, etc.) book is short and fast-paced, flicking from one character’s point of view to another “like a real epic,” but it never becomes confusing. The characters are fairly standard and sympathetic enough to keep the reader’s attention, and the dialogue is reasonably well-constructed. As is often the case with genre comedy, the humor is only fitfully effective and relies a little on crudeness (the sprite’s name) and stale hipness (wizard leaf is exactly what one thinks it is: Murland smokes some and levitates—“Look how high he is!”), with only mixed results. Still, the story is fun and the first in a trilogy.
An amusing comic fantasy tale featuring a band of unlikely champions.Pub Date: March 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5442-6849-1
Page Count: 322
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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