The maiden installment of this fantasy saga mainly sets the stage for future clashing and questing.
In Burr’s fantasy debut, an unassuming young woman learns she’s the inheritor of mighty “magick”—and a key figure in the war between good and evil.
The kickoff to Burr’s multivolume fantasy series introduces 20-year-old Esra, a seemingly ordinary peasant in the kingdom of LeVara. It’s not long before she learns that her entire life has been a lie for her own protection. LeVara, far from its appearance as a sleepy land under an apathetic king, has long been a simmering battleground for opposing armies of mages: the heroic Keepers and the evil Elites. The latter are the sorcerer-descendants of a fiendish usurper from centuries past; they’re back after a breakthrough in “magick” R&D helped the villains swell their ranks with orclike mutant soldiers. Esra, who thought herself a clumsy country orphan, is really the daughter of powerful Keeper wizards; she’s a chosen-one type, destined to free LeVara from tyranny. Once Esra’s identity becomes known to the Elites, the Keepers snatch her up to give her a crash course in magickal ground rules, combat techniques and culture. She strives to rally the fearsome but reluctant nonhuman civilizations to join the Keepers’ cause. Though some details are interesting—Burr imagines an enchanted app that can make one’s own skin become a kind of MapQuest and text-message display—these expository passages begin to read like laundry lists, perhaps in anticipation of the series’ future installments. The idea of a female heroic-fantasy protagonist is far from the novelty it once was, and Esra is a plucky but generally nondescript lead; even as the narrative puts her through her first taste of battle and bloodshed, she remains rather bland. Despite lots of flirtatious, hunky Keepers hovering in Esra’s orbit, no overt romance beckons the heroine in this volume. But Burr’s narrative moves at a solid pace, and the author lays the groundwork properly. With these preliminaries out of the way, the next installments hint at grand action in the Tolkien tradition.
The maiden installment of this fantasy saga mainly sets the stage for future clashing and questing.Pub Date: April 13, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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