A skillfully rendered fictional account of an obscure but fascinating slice of history.
Kinsey’s historical novel portrays a notorious 17th-century kidnapping on Ireland’s south coast.
The novel reimagines the 1631 Barbary Coast corsairs’ invasion of the Irish coast, in which they set fire to the village of Baltimore and kidnap nearly all the inhabitants. The corsairs then set sail with their captives as cargo on a monthlong voyage to Algiers, dodging the French and Spanish navies along the way, where they will sell their human cargo into slavery. The corsair captain, Murad Reis, is a Dutchman who has converted to Islam and becomes an increasingly complex character as the story progresses. The passage to Algiers is rough, and along the way there are even some belowdecks murders to solve. Once the ship arrives in Algiers, a North African city rivaling the most beautiful places in Europe, husbands and wives are separated, and some mothers never see their children again. Religion is serious business in Algiers, and many captured Calvinists convert to Islam to get better treatment (some even become true believers) over the many years they are enslaved. The author focuses on a few select characters and fashions some intriguing fates for them. Capt. Murad leaves soon after he gets to Algiers to go on more plundering adventures. But he shows up again two years later to free Felix Gunter and his brother Caleb Gunter from slavery. Ciara, a beautiful Irish maid, takes the adventure in stride (“The captain says you’ll be sold to the pasha, Ciara.” “Well, I do hope so.”) but quickly realizes that harem life is not for her. Religion is an important plot element in the novel, and not just Islam and Christianity: As it turns out, the village of Baltimore’s fate was sealed by local Irish Catholics who hated the English Calvinist interlopers. Swashbuckling sea battles provide ample action here, and lore about weapons and tactics will delight devotees of pre-20th-century history. This is also a story that questions not just religious beliefs, but also mankind’s true identity under heaven. But it is ultimately the characters—and their attendant vices and virtues—that grab the reader’s attention over the course of the novel.
A skillfully rendered fictional account of an obscure but fascinating slice of history.Pub Date: May 24, 2023
ISBN: 9780995292185
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Cinegrafica Films & Publishing Inc
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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