An often engaging supernatural thriller with an immortal protagonist with meritorious human traits.
In Weech’s debut supernatural thriller, an empathetic soul collector must stop one of his own from reaping dark souls and committing murder.
Bob Drifter is a typical Arizona substitute teacher—except for the fact that he’s a 338-year-old Journeyman. When a person is near death, Bob can transport his or her soul to the afterlife. He keeps a low profile, but it turns out that police Sgt. Richard Hertly is on the verge of connecting him to a few recent deaths, as witnesses in each case describe a stranger nearby. Richard and his partner, Detective Kyle LeShea, soon link Bob to a hospital death from his fingerprint, and Richard becomes determined to prove that Bob’s a murderer; he even follows Bob when he takes a new job in New York state. Meanwhile, Bob and his fellow Journeymen search for Grimm, a rogue collector who waits for souls to “sour” and become “Blacksouls.” Journeymen don’t have the ability to kill humans, but Grimm, with his Blacksoul-derived power, is dead set on finding a way. The novel is split into three parts that feel like separate short stories, though Bob and the antagonistic Grimm are always at their centers. The first is the most riveting, despite the fact that it has the least amount of action. It introduces Bob as a compassionate man who’s clearly only transporting souls out of necessity; other characters, and the narrative itself, describe the pain he feels when he watches people die. He also tutors a student named David, befriending the boy and his family for reasons that readers will likely surmise. Despite the book’s title, and its narrative device of recurring journal entries, the remaining two parts offer relatively little insight into Bob, instead concentrating on the Journeymen’s frequent, violent encounters with Grimm. That said, the novel does treat readers to laudable characters, such as Bob’s mentor and friend, Drisc. He’s a member of the Council, which tries to establish rules for Journeymen, and holds meetings in a bowling alley. Bob also has a chance at love with a photographer named Patience, and because she’s a mere mortal, the melodramatic possibilities abound. Bob eventually shows a few additional abilities, too; for example, he can “Manipulate” emotions or ease others’ pain. The ending leaves the door open for future sequels.
An often engaging supernatural thriller with an immortal protagonist with meritorious human traits.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1480815940
Page Count: 472
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.
In the first volume of a trilogy, a fresh cataclysm besets a physically unstable world whose ruling society oppresses its most magically powerful inhabitants.
The continent ironically known as the Stillness is riddled with fault lines and volcanoes and periodically suffers from Seasons, civilization-destroying tectonic catastrophes. It’s also occupied by a small population of orogenes, people with the ability to sense and manipulate thermal and kinetic energy. They can quiet earthquakes and quench volcanoes…but also touch them off. While they’re necessary, they’re also feared and frequently lynched. The “lucky” ones are recruited by the Fulcrum, where the brutal training hones their powers in the service of the Empire. The tragic trap of the orogene's life is told through three linked narratives (the link is obvious fairly quickly): Damaya, a fierce, ambitious girl new to the Fulcrum; Syenite, an angry young woman ordered to breed with her bitter and frighteningly powerful mentor and who stumbles across secrets her masters never intended her to know; and Essun, searching for the husband who murdered her young son and ran away with her daughter mere hours before a Season tore a fiery rift across the Stillness. Jemisin (The Shadowed Sun, 2012, etc.) is utterly unflinching; she tackles racial and social politics which have obvious echoes in our own world while chronicling the painfully intimate struggle between the desire to survive at all costs and the need to maintain one’s personal integrity. Beneath the story’s fantastic trappings are incredibly real people who undergo intense, sadly believable pain.
With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-22929-6
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
Imperfect, but well constructed and engrossing nonetheless.
Cerúlia recovers from her wounds and decides it’s finally time to take back her throne in Kozloff’s (The Queen of Raiders, 2020, etc.) penultimate Nine Realms novel.
Badly burned and laid up in a Healing Center, Cerúlia is losing faith in herself. She misses the various friends she’s made along her journey, misses her home, and resents her limitations as she heals from injuries sustained in the previous novel. In the past, her magical “Talent” for talking to animals has helped her make friends with local creatures, but she’s worried that something has happened to her ability and fears using it. As she slowly recuperates and learns from the fellow residents in the healing center, Cerúlia comes to understand that she must face her responsibility to her people and find a way to become the Queen of Weirandale. To that end, she returns home to her nation’s capital, Cascada, only to discover that her long-lost foster sister, Percia, is about to marry the kindly son of the maniacal and power-hungry Regent Matwyck, the very person keeping Cerúlia from her throne. Reunited with her beloved foster family, Cerúlia decides it is time to stop hiding under aliases and disguises. But with no army to support her, how is she supposed to save herself from Matwyck’s clutches? And now that she’s seen more of the world and understands the lives of regular people, does she even believe in the idea of monarchy at all? Kozloff finally brings the action back to Weirandale in a compelling setup to the last novel in her series. Like Book 2, this one struggles a bit with standing on its own, but Kozloff uses these pages to make Cerúlia a more complex and compelling character. Threads following other characters from other nations are easy to follow and add dimension to the world, but as of now they still feel a bit too detached from the main plotline.
Imperfect, but well constructed and engrossing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-16866-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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