An uneven debut fantasy, but its intriguing setting and well-developed characters show promise.
In Hewitt’s debut YA fantasy novel, a young woman—part human, part elf—joins a group of mages and warriors in the hope of learning how to use her own magic.
The novel gets into the action on its very first page, when a killer swings a sword at protagonist Sylvia, causing her father, the king of Larenta, to sacrifice himself to rescue her. Sometime after her father’s death, she resurfaces at a country inn with a lot of baggage. She encounters a mage named Gavren traveling with his apprentice, Kyra, and Derik, their warrior companion. They ask Sylvia to join them on their journey, hoping they can find someone to heal the traces of “shadow” left behind from the altercation that killed her father. Sylvia’s reluctant to join them, for good reason: She’s half-elf, with a strain of fairy-elf magic in her blood. The magic is powerful and uncontrollable, and she feels she must keep it from any magic users who might seek to manipulate her. The mage’s party manages to convince her to come along, but Gavren soon proves himself untrustworthy when he takes Sylvia’s box, a magical item left to her by her late mother. During their journey, however, Sylvia forms a grudging, mutual understanding with Gavren and Kyra, and quickly falls in love with Derik, who shares her romantic feelings. As a group, they encounter orcs, soldiers and dragons, some helpful and some harmful, and learn more about Sylvia’s importance in a changing world. Much of the book centers on Sylvia’s growing relationship with Derik and her struggles with intimacy; after her father was killed, Sylvia was at the mercy of a group of soldiers, a fact that haunts her throughout the book. The mage Gavren shows the greatest depth; he manages to be a good guy while also resorting to trickery to learn Sylvia’s secrets. The prose is often awkward, however, relying on repetition and declarations of emotion (“[H]e was so taken by the beautiful woman he was made oblivious to what was happening”), and it may sometimes be hard for readers to follow how one event leads to the next. That said, there’s much to be admired in this book; the fantasy setting leaves a lot to be explored in future installments, and Sylvia’s role within it promises great drama.
An uneven debut fantasy, but its intriguing setting and well-developed characters show promise.Pub Date: June 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-1475990300
Page Count: 294
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.
A time-toying spy romance that’s truly a thriller.
In the author’s note following the moving conclusion of her gripping, gleefully delicious debut novel, Bradley explains how she gathered historical facts about Lt. Graham Gore, a real-life Victorian naval officer and polar explorer, then “extrapolated a great deal” about him to come up with one of her main characters, a curly-haired, chain-smoking, devastatingly charming dreamboat who has been transported through time. Having also found inspiration in the sole extant daguerreotype of Gore, showing him to have been “a very attractive man,” Bradley wrote the earliest draft of the book for a cluster of friends who were similarly passionate about polar explorers. Her finished novel—taut, artfully unspooled, and vividly written—retains the kind of insouciant joy and intimacy you might expect from a book with those origins. It’s also breathtakingly sexy. The time-toggling plot focuses on the plight of a British civil servant who takes a high-paying job on a secret mission, working as a “bridge” to help time-traveling “expats” resettle in 21st-century London—and who falls hard for her charge, the aforementioned Commander Gore. Drama, intrigue, and romance ensue. And while this quasi-futuristic tale of time and tenderness never seems to take itself too seriously, it also offers a meaningful, nuanced perspective on the challenges we face, the choices we make, and the way we live and love today.
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781668045145
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Weird and haunting and excellent.
The much-anticipated second novel from the author of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (2004).
The narrator of this novel answers to the name “Piranesi” even though he suspects that it's not his name. This name was chosen for him by the Other, the only living person Piranesi has encountered during his extensive explorations of the House. Readers who recognize Piranesi as the name of an Italian artist known for his etchings of Roman ruins and imaginary prisons might recognize this as a cruel joke that the Other enjoys at the expense of the novel’s protagonist. It is that, but the name is also a helpful clue for readers trying to situate themselves in the world Clarke has created. The character known as Piranesi lives within a Classical structure of endless, inescapable halls occasionally inundated by the sea. These halls are inhabited by statues that seem to be allegories—a woman carrying a beehive; a dog-fox teaching two squirrels and two satyrs; two children laughing, one of them carrying a flute—but the meaning of these images is opaque. Piranesi is happy to let the statues simply be. With her second novel, Clarke invokes tropes that have fueled a century of surrealist and fantasy fiction as well as movies, television series, and even video games. At the foundation of this story is an idea at least as old as Chaucer: Our world was once filled with magic, but the magic has drained away. Clarke imagines where all that magic goes when it leaves our world and what it would be like to be trapped in that place. Piranesi is a naif, and there’s much that readers understand before he does. But readers who accompany him as he learns to understand himself will see magic returning to our world.
Weird and haunting and excellent.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63557-563-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
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