A lark that can’t quite follow through on its entertaining setup.
A small town rallies to beat ever worsening odds against its survival in this madcap comic novel by Wensink (Broken Piano for President, 2012, etc.).
The flyspeck town of Dyson, Ohio, is in trouble: A $10 million budget shortfall has it scrambling for revenue ideas. But the locals have little faith in the leadership of its young mayor, Bo, to concoct a tourist-magnet scheme—Dyson has already tried that, trumpeting itself as a “Christmas City.” Oh, and, according to NASA, a falling satellite may blast the town to cinders in a matter of days. The opening sections of this novel are antic fun, and Wensink matches his pileup of absurd predicaments with a motley crew of characters: a Powerball winner trying to launch a casino in town, a suicidal ex-mayor, an on-the-skids radio host hoping the satellite disaster will be his big break, a police chief who was once a world-class opera singer, the owner of a plastic-fruit factory who thinks his product is key to Dyson’s recovery. Wensink knows this setup is so goofball that he doesn’t need to oversell the comedy, and his laugh lines are mostly blunt and deadpan; when Bo asks if the satellite can be shot down, he’s told, “Those missiles are reserved for killing people on the other side of the planet.” But once the nuttiness is established, Wensink struggles to make something of it. Is he satirizing Midwestern civic pride? Tourist traps? Hype-driven news cycles? And why is a mummy wandering around town anyhow? Wensink crams more characters into this clown car than necessary, laboring in the closing chapters to track each of his leads, and the forced, faux-cliffhanger section endings blunt what ought to have been more high-spirited fun.
A lark that can’t quite follow through on its entertaining setup.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-940430-56-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Curbside Splendor
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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