A solid debut set in a vivid fantasy world.
A mystical apprentice uses her magical abilities against dark forces in Cederman’s debut high-fantasy novel, the first in a planned series.
The novel begins with a prologue that introduces Caeth Salkar, a “new-age anthropologist” researching her descendants: a race of ancient mystics called the Viskarae. The story then goes back to the time of those mystics, whose society includes people with royal, sacred and dark warrior bloodlines. After a tidal wave ravages the Viskarae’s peaceful community, their spiritual leader, the Shepherd, has a vision of a new homeland, and they all make plans to travel there. Meanwhile, the Shepherd takes Kaela, a local girl, under his wing after she’s chosen by the Viskarae’s deity as one of the five Mystics. Isolated from outsiders in their new home, the Viskarae test the limits of their mystical abilities. However, some of them become enamored with the dark elements of their bloodlines. As a chosen Mystic, Kaela must keep her sacred oath and fight the dark forces that threaten her people—including her own family. Cedarman effectively fleshes out the Viskarae’s society; the details of their daily lives and the structure of their government are imaginative while also being logical and realistic. The characters’ interpersonal relationships, particularly the charming bond between Kaela and the Shepherd, are given equal time with the action, so readers will feel how high the stakes are. The author’s language is quite elegant, which works well in the character descriptions (“Kaela saw the ash blonde ringlets woven throughout her chestnut curls”) and battle scenes; however, the same style in the characters’ dialogue feels too stiff and formal. Also, although the framing device of Caeth’s story will grab readers’ attention at the start of the book, the author provides only occasional exposition about her later on, and offers little on what Caeth feels about what she’s learning. Overall, however, the story is complex and intriguing, and ends on a compelling cliffhanger to lead readers to the next book.
A solid debut set in a vivid fantasy world.Pub Date: April 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481175951
Page Count: 478
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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