A deliciously deft horror page-turner.
In Cash’s (Collision, 2014) horror novel, a young couple confronts malicious spirits while renovating a Victorian mansion.
Real estate investors Brad and Julie have flipped a series of homes, with each property netting them enough cash to buy and renovate the next. He loves losing himself in the physical labor, while she handles the paperwork. But their latest purchase, the Bedlam House on Long Island, feels different. As Brad sorts through the mounds of trash in the dilapidated basement, he starts to resent his wife; Julie had insisted they buy the mansion, as she was drawn to its sales potential. The harder Brad works, however, the stranger Bedlam House becomes. One day, he hears an odd rumbling, and when he breaks through a plaster wall, he finds a subbasement filled with crates containing a huge trove of “the stuff of everyday life dating back to who knew when.” Unbeknownst to Brad, two ghosts, Tessa and Gerald, are watching him. Tessa intends to seduce the young husband—something he might not survive. However, Gerald warns her that threatening his life will cause the mysterious creatures known as Sentinels to interfere, which neither ghost wants. This is familiar genre territory, but Cash’s breezy prose and sharply drawn characters shine. For example, he quickly portrays Tessa as a spoiled princess when she tells Gerald, “If [Brad] throws away my fox stole, you are going to have to kill him.” The author executes haunting scenes with a perfect balance of style and substance: “Nails caressed the back of his neck, and he whipped around, rattled, his eyes wild.” The narrative’s pacing and tone, though, are perhaps its most enjoyable aspects. Cash lets readers’ expectations simmer throughout, and he encourages them to cheer for both the ghouls and the greedy couple—and to look forward to whatever horrific climax awaits them. That said, the tidy ending is the only place where Cash’s control works against him; readers will likely crave a much livelier mess.
A deliciously deft horror page-turner.Pub Date: May 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497345515
Page Count: 392
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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