Intermittently lumpy and self-indulgent, but enormously entertaining throughout. And the Gaiman faithful—as hungry for...
The West African spider-trickster god Anansi presides benignly over this ebullient partial sequel to Gaiman’s award-winning fantasy American Gods (2001).
In his earthly incarnation as agelessly spry “Mr. Nancy,” the god has died, been buried and mourned (in Florida), and has left (in England) an adult son called Fat Charlie—though he isn’t fat; he is in fact a former “boy who was half a god . . . broken into two by an old woman with a grudge.” His other “half” is Charlie’s hitherto unknown brother Spider, summoned via animistic magic, thereafter an affable quasi-double and provocateur who steals Charlie’s fiancé Rosie and stirs up trouble with Charlie’s blackhearted boss, “weasel”-like entrepeneur-embezzler Grahame Coats. These characters and several other part-human, part-animal ones mesh in dizzying comic intrigues that occur on two continents, in a primitive “place at the end of the world,” in dreams and on a conveniently remote, extradition-free Caribbean island. The key to Gaiman’s ingenious plot is the tale of how Spider (Anansi) tricked Tiger, gaining possession of the world’s vast web of stories and incurring the lasting wrath of a bloodthirsty mortal—perhaps immortal—enemy. Gaiman juggles several intersecting narratives expertly (though when speaking as omniscient narrator, he does tend to ramble), blithely echoing numerous creation myths and folklore motifs, Terry Southern’s antic farces, Evelyn Waugh’s comic contes cruel, and even—here and there—Muriel Spark’s whimsical supernaturalism. Everything comes together smashingly, in an extended dénouement that pits both brothers against all Tiger’s malevolent forms, resolves romantic complications satisfactorily and reasserts the power of stories and songs to represent, sustain and complete us. The result, though less dazzling than American Gods, is even more moving.
Intermittently lumpy and self-indulgent, but enormously entertaining throughout. And the Gaiman faithful—as hungry for stories as Tiger himself—will devour it gratefully.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-051518-X
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Entertaining, though not in the league of J.K. Rowling—or even Anne Rice. But please, people: no more vamps and wizards, OK?
Harry Potter meets Lestat de Lioncourt. Throw in a time machine, and you’ve got just about everything you need for a full-kit fantasy.
The protagonist is a witch. Her beau is a vampire. If you accept the argument that we’ve seen entirely too many of both kinds of characters in contemporary fiction, then you’re not alone. Yet, though Harkness seems to be arriving very late to a party that one hopes will soon break up, her debut novel has its merits; she writes well, for one thing, and, as a historian at the University of Southern California, she has a scholarly bent that plays out effectively here. Indeed, her tale opens in a library—and not just any library, but the Bodleian at Oxford, pride of England and the world. Diana Bishop is both tenured scholar and witch, and when her book-fetcher hauls up a medieval treatise on alchemy with “a faint, iridescent shimmer that seemed to be escaping from between the pages,” she knows what to do with it. Unfortunately, the library is crammed with other witches, some of malevolent intent, and Diana soon finds that books can be dangerous propositions. She’s a bit of a geek, and not shy of bragging, either, as when she trumpets the fact that she has “a prodigious, photographic memory” and could read and write before any of the other children of the coven could. Yet she blossoms, as befits a bodice-ripper no matter how learned, once neckbiter and renowned geneticist Matthew Clairmont enters the scene. He’s a smoothy, that one, “used to being the only active participant in a conversation,” smart and goal-oriented, and a valuable ally in the great mantomachy that follows—and besides, he’s a pretty good kisser, too. “It’s a vampire thing,” he modestly avers.
Entertaining, though not in the league of J.K. Rowling—or even Anne Rice. But please, people: no more vamps and wizards, OK?Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-02241-0
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2010
An enjoyable, worthwhile end to an immersive series.
Cerúlia takes back her throne, but her troubles are just beginning in Kozloff’s (A Broken Queen, 2020, etc.) fourth and final Four Realms novel.
It only takes five chapters for Cerúlia to successfully overthrow Matwyck and take her throne. At first it feels a bit pat for a four-book series to resolve its main plotline so early in its final volume, but it turns out there’s more to successfully ruling a kingdom than putting a crown on your head. Queen Cerúlia has to root out the network of people who supported Matwyck’s coup; she must discern which people genuinely wish to serve her and which are liars waiting to end her reign before it gets going. What’s more, she must address political issues like the growing resentment among the common people toward the aristocracy and deal with thorny issues of international diplomacy. All the while, she has to figure out how to finally be herself when she was forced to spend almost her entire life pretending she was not the rightful queen. Kozloff has great instincts when it comes to pacing, and the novel flies by with a good mix of action sequences and emotional, character-developing beats. Her villains are never one-note, and her heroes are complicated and fallible. Still, it all starts to feel a little paint-by-number. It’s not that there are never any consequences or losses, but eventually it feels a bit too certain that Cerúlia will get it right and things will go her way. Even so, the series ender is just as much fun as the rest of the books.
An enjoyable, worthwhile end to an immersive series.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-16896-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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