With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.
In the first volume of a trilogy, a fresh cataclysm besets a physically unstable world whose ruling society oppresses its most magically powerful inhabitants.
The continent ironically known as the Stillness is riddled with fault lines and volcanoes and periodically suffers from Seasons, civilization-destroying tectonic catastrophes. It’s also occupied by a small population of orogenes, people with the ability to sense and manipulate thermal and kinetic energy. They can quiet earthquakes and quench volcanoes…but also touch them off. While they’re necessary, they’re also feared and frequently lynched. The “lucky” ones are recruited by the Fulcrum, where the brutal training hones their powers in the service of the Empire. The tragic trap of the orogene's life is told through three linked narratives (the link is obvious fairly quickly): Damaya, a fierce, ambitious girl new to the Fulcrum; Syenite, an angry young woman ordered to breed with her bitter and frighteningly powerful mentor and who stumbles across secrets her masters never intended her to know; and Essun, searching for the husband who murdered her young son and ran away with her daughter mere hours before a Season tore a fiery rift across the Stillness. Jemisin (The Shadowed Sun, 2012, etc.) is utterly unflinching; she tackles racial and social politics which have obvious echoes in our own world while chronicling the painfully intimate struggle between the desire to survive at all costs and the need to maintain one’s personal integrity. Beneath the story’s fantastic trappings are incredibly real people who undergo intense, sadly believable pain.
With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-22929-6
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
Sequel to The Fourth Guardian (1994). The original guardians of the four Stones of Power are dead—in the present, that is; but in the past they're still plotting and squabbling, their rivalries stimulated by Ketoko, a demon, sort of, who's master of time, or something. In a plot of inordinate complication, the new guardians- -Elena, old Corbo's protÇgÇ; her young son, Raphael; and the weird youngsters William and Violet—face a double threat, from mafioso bigwig Frankie and his assistant, Raymond, and also from Igor (he has three personalities) and his psychic-whizzes, Tippi and Thaddeus. Unprepared and unwary, the guardians succumb swiftly to the assault. Elena dies. William, though helped by Raphael to battle demons in the jungle, is also killed, sort of. Raymond easily romances away Violet's Stone, then relents, returns the Stone, and helps her battle Igor. Tippi and Thaddeus, launching a psychic attack against Violet, are betrayed by their assistant, whom Ketoko sends into the past to warn Corbo. Violet disposes of Tippi, Thaddeus switches sides, and the Stones acquire a new set of guardians. Wild, weird, and unconvincing. Still, fans of the first volume will probably enjoy this one; readers who demand plot rigor and logic before special effects, though, will find it more often annoying than stimulating.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-85862-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The second in a prequel trilogy set roughly a thousand years before the main action in Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar series (Storm Warning, 1994, etc.). Ten years after the action of The Black Gryphon (1994), the gryphons and their human companions, despite their inability to use magic with full effect, have established a cliffside city called White Gryphon near the Western Ocean. Skandranon, the hero of the migration to the new city, at first finds himself restless with the role of peacetime leader, but new challenges soon arise. A false ``healer'' is discovered to be torturing his patients and is expelled—only to return in secret and take revenge. Then a ship arrives from the powerful Haighlei Empire, bearing ambassadors who accuse the new city of trespassing on Haighlei territory. Hoping to avoid open warfare, the gryphons send ambassadors to the Empire—not suspecting that some of their fellow citizens seek to sabotage the pending alliance. All this is narrated in a style many readers may find slow-moving, with frequent descriptions of costume and setting and introspective passages from Skandranon's point of view. Newcomers to Lackey's fantasy universe are best advised to sample one of her solo novels, but the many fans who follow the series will probably find little to object to in this collaboration with husband Dixon. (12 b&w illustrations by Dixon, not seen)
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-88677-631-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: DAW/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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