Although the fairy-tale machinery creaks, the lively backdrop of medieval manners and mores ensures a gratifying journey.
Romantic legend receives a solid grounding in social realism in this engaging historical melodrama, the first of a planned trilogy set in the imaginary 13th-century kingdom of Lothemia.
The story concerns two daughters of the Duke of Gildren, the gorgeous Katrina and the sensible Eleanor. One day, the handsome knight Sebastian, son of the cruel Duke of Westfeld, gallops up with a marriage proposal for Katrina, the culmination of a byzantine scheme to end the feud between their families. Katrina, already secretly married to Sebastian, is pregnant, and to escape her stepmother’s wrath, has fled into the forest and is presumed dead. Sebastian half-heartedly marries Eleanor to preserve the family alliance; meanwhile, Katrina keeps herself hidden and moves with her and Sebastian’s daughter Ella to a village near Sebastian and Eleanor’s castle. The narrative then settles down to explore the lives of the two sisters, one a duchess, the other a peasant. Eleanor’s marriage proves loveless, with Sebastian always abroad on adventures, but she takes satisfaction in administering the duchy and her growing brood, which she augments by cheerfully adopting her husband’s bastards. The feckless Sebastian occasionally redeems himself by rescuing children from fire or wild horses. Meanwhile, Katrina grows bitter at the hardships of peasant life and finally kills herself, leaving Ella with a mysterious key and an unmatched slipper as proofs of noble parentage. First-time novelist Attwell burdens the story with tiresome plot contrivances that exist mainly to set up ecstatic revelations and dizzying pauper-to-princess elevations in the denouement. The novel’s strength lies in the author’s vivid recreation of medieval society. Attwell’s world capably illustrates a rigid but subtly graded status hierarchy in which no two people are exactly equal, governed by complex webs of dependency and feudal loyalty and infused with exquisite aristocratic manners that mask a coarse contempt for the lower orders.
Although the fairy-tale machinery creaks, the lively backdrop of medieval manners and mores ensures a gratifying journey.Pub Date: July 30, 2005
ISBN: 1-933142-13-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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