Final installment of the historical fantasy trilogy (Dark Victory, 2012, etc.) wherein a Hungarian Jewish witch and her fallen-angel husband battle the Nazis in an alternate World War II.
After a prolonged and tearful farewell, Magda, the last of the Lazarus witches, packs her whiny sister Gisele off to England so that she and husband Raziel can seek this book’s MacGuffin, the Heaven Sapphire, a gem powerful enough to defeat even the demon Asmodel, by whom Hitler is possessed. Again, she will need the support of her sponsor, the defiantly anti-Nazi vampire Count Bathory of Budapest. Currently, the gem appears to be located in the Caucasus, home of fire-demons and unfortunately occupied by the Soviets. With the help of magic-carpet dealer Ziyad, Magda and Raziel draw close to their objective, but there are complications. Hitler may be about to break his compact with Stalin and attack the oil fields. Asmodel has his own schemes afoot. The Soviets have invented machines that render magic null and void. And it’s far from certain what Raziel’s brothers, some of them fallen, others still angelic, will do. As before, there are long chunks of travelogue and talk but precious little actual drama, and the narrative’s degenerated to the point where much of it is mere reportage. Worst of all, the final confrontation with Asmodel—and it reveals nothing to state that there is one—manages to be both inexplicable and disappointing.
Promising material undermined by undisciplined, poor writing and a failure of nerve, although fans of the previous book will at least want to know how it all comes out.Pub Date: March 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2319-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | FANTASY | HISTORICAL FANTASY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK TO SCREEN
Some very nice, very smart African-Americans are plunged into netherworlds of malevolent sorcery in the waning days of Jim Crow—as if Jim Crow alone wasn’t enough of a curse to begin with.
In the northern U.S. of the mid-1950s, as depicted in this merrily macabre pastiche by Ruff (The Mirage, 2012, etc.), Driving While Black is an even more perilous proposition than it is now. Ask Atticus Turner, an African-American Korean War veteran and science-fiction buff, who is compelled to face an all-too-customary gauntlet of racist highway patrolmen and hostile white roadside hamlets en route from his South Side Chicago home to a remote Massachusetts village in search of his curmudgeonly father, Montrose, who was lured away by a young white “sharp dresser” driving a silver Cadillac with tinted windows. At least Atticus isn’t alone; his uncle George, who puts out annual editions of The Safe Negro Travel Guide, is splitting driving duties in his Packard station wagon “with inlaid birch trim and side paneling.” Also along for the ride is Atticus’ childhood friend Letitia Dandridge, another sci-fi fan, whose family lived in the same neighborhood as the Turners. It turns out this road trip is merely the beginning of a series of bizarre chimerical adventures ensnaring both the Turner and Dandridge clans in ancient rituals, arcane magical texts, alternate universes, and transmogrifying potions, all of which bears some resemblance to the supernatural visions of H.P. Lovecraft and other gothic dream makers of the past. Ruff’s ripping yarns often pile on contrivances and overextend the narratives in the grand manner of pulp storytelling, but the reinvented mythos here seems to have aroused in him a newfound empathy and engagement with his characters.
If nothing else, you have to giggle over how this novel’s namesake, who held vicious white supremacist opinions, must be doing triple axels in his grave at the way his imagination has been so impudently shaken and stirred.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-229206-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | HISTORICAL FICTION | FANTASY | HISTORICAL FANTASY
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