A beautifully told, if not groundbreaking, historical love story.
In 19th-century England, a romance frustrated by circumstance struggles to begin anew.
Sylvia Stafford’s father was an unrepentant gambler and lost the family fortune in a card game; ashamed, he took his own life, leaving Sylvia penniless, abandoned by fair-weather friends, and forced to take a position as a governess to survive. Before her drop in station, she’d begun a romance with Col. Sebastian Conrad, who was sent to India soon afterward to help put down a rebellion. Sebastian was badly wounded, his face horribly disfigured; when he returned to England, he learned that his father and brother died, leaving him in charge of the family estate as the Earl of Radcliffe. Surly and withdrawn, Sebastian now lives a lonely life; his meddling sister discovers that he still keeps a locket of hair given to him by Sylvia, so she conspires to bring her to his estate to revive his sagging spirits. Reluctantly, Sylvia agrees, but at first, the tension between her and Sebastian isn’t borne of rekindled love but rather deep resentment. Sylvia believes that Sebastian deserted her because he never responded to the numerous love letters she sent him. However, Sebastian, too, feels jilted; unbeknownst to Sylvia, those missives never arrived. Debut author Matthews adroitly captures the internal conflicts of her two main characters, particularly Sebastian’s mixed emotions: “He wanted to hate her. At the same time, much to his mortification, he wanted to grab hold of her, to pull her into his arms and cover her soft mouth with his.” Specifically, she shows how Sebastian harbors the suspicion that Sylvia is simply seeking to improve her own lot and how Sylvia believes that Sebastian is repulsed by her family’s sullied reputation. Although the overall story is somewhat formulaic—a love frustrated by mutual misunderstandings—the author’s prose is consistently refined and elegant, and she memorably builds the simmering attraction between Sylvia and Sebastian.
A beautifully told, if not groundbreaking, historical love story.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Perfectly Proper Press
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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