A saga dark in aspect, rich in detail and mythic in dimension.
Even during wartime, the more dangerous enemies do indeed sleep within King Arthur’s own household.
The second in Hume’s (Dragon’s Child, 2013) King Arthur trilogy (previously published outside the United States between 2009 and 2010) begins on the battlefield but ends on the more treacherous field of the court itself. The first half is rife with tales of warriors, vengeance, bloodthirsty deeds and clever military strategizing. Artor (as he's called in the book) fights to regain lands lost to the Saxons and to unite Briton. He must overthrow Glamdring Ironfist, whose rash, brutal behavior contrasts sharply with Artor’s thoughtful attention to both tactical trickery and political acumen. Glamdring believes that his possession of the Arden knife will bring him victory. Little does he know that the true knife is a living man, a slave within his own fortress. The second half of Hume’s tome is a tale of domestic troubles, jealousies and cruelties. Urged to produce an heir, Artor must stifle memories of his beloved first wife and marry the vain Wenhaver. The appearance of the shadowy and deliciously evil figure of Morgan on the eve of their betrothal ratchets up the tension. Wenhaver’s explosions of temper, however, threaten not only the marriage bed, but also Artor’s tenuous hold over the kingdom. Yet, an even more sinister force roams the kingdom, viciously assaulting animals, children and women. Artor must find the villain and punish him without compromising his own honor or resurrecting the memory of his evil father, Uther Pendragon. As with her Merlin trilogy, Hume’s passion for legend begets a deep text. Each character—including the imposing Myrddion Merlinus; his apprentice Nimue; the scrappy former slave Bedwyr; and the noble Targo—is fully drawn, with secrets, desires and often noble hopes. The dialogue fittingly shifts from stilted formalities to raw insults.
A saga dark in aspect, rich in detail and mythic in dimension.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1520-9
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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