A hit-and-miss New Age yarn, mixing richly imaginative turns with stolid rumination.
Mankind takes a giant leap toward becoming womankind in Ritchings’ twisty fantasy adventure.
Mike (the characters in this story have no last names), a detective with psychic abilities in a nameless city, is plagued by headaches that, he discovers, can be alleviated by donning women’s lingerie, which his girlfriend Beth provides. With the help of Rose, a medium, and Rachel, his guardian angel, Mike learns that his headaches are caused by Merle, his long-suppressed female aspect, who is longing to break free. He is a member of a new species, Homo integratis, that can physically change from male to female and deploy a powerful combination of masculine and feminine Kundalini energies. Rose and Rachel send Mike/Merle on missions to rescue child slaves and bring them back to The Matrix, a community for Homo integratis kids established on land cleared of timber by intelligent beavers and gophers. The rescued kids thrive on The Matrix’s yoga regimen, and several boys begin turning into girls, learn how to astrally project themselves, and start a flute, tin-whistle and bagpipes band. But the community faces challenges too, including an antagonistic school board, nosy child-welfare bureaucrats, an Arctic drilling project that could make the planet explode, and the chief trafficker’s vendetta. This first book in Ritchings’ Return to Grace series features a colorful fictive world that feels like a Hindu-inflected, gender-bending version of X-Men, written in prose that’s often lyrical and beguiling: “Looking around through groggy eyes, Papi realized she was a prisoner,” he writes of a lepidopteran shape-shifter snared in a net; “[b]utterfly tears streamed down her tiny little cheeks.” Unfortunately, the heroes’ magical powers make crime-fighting too easy to feel suspenseful, and the book sometimes bogs down in long-winded Eastern-ish philosophy (“You must be willing to let go of the illusion of control as espoused by the ego itself”). The result is an ungainly admixture of entertaining whimsy and earnest doctrine.
A hit-and-miss New Age yarn, mixing richly imaginative turns with stolid rumination.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2021
ISBN: 9780978189143
Page Count: 304
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.
A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.
Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374172
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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