History, time travel and fantasy combine in a solidly readable entertainment.
A white witch is pursued across time by her nemesis, a sorcerer who may also have been Jack the Ripper.
Stretching her tale over several centuries, British-based Brackston brings energy as well as commercial savvy to her saga of innocence and the dark arts. Young Bess Hawksmith is a teenager in Wessex in 1627 when the Black Death arrives in her village, killing her father, brother and sister. Bess’s survival is a miracle which her mother, Anne, a healer and midwife, won’t discuss, although it involves local man Gideon Masters, to whom Bess turns for protection when Anne is arrested for witchcraft and sentenced to hang. But Gideon is a warlock with plans to initiate Bess and then join forces with her. She evades him but uses his magic to escape her own death sentence, then finds herself condemned to an eternity of making amends, with Gideon in pursuit. As a nurse in Victorian London she encounters Masters in two guises, one of whom Bess suspects of savagely murdering prostitutes in Whitechapel. In 1917, on the battlefields of World War I, Bess tends wounded soldiers and finds a man who loves and understands her, but Gideon intervenes again. A contemporary narrative shows Bess befriended by a teenager who becomes her pupil, assisting at the all-female confrontation with Gideon, a fight of elemental proportions.
History, time travel and fantasy combine in a solidly readable entertainment.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-62168-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans will love the second installment of this dark fantasy about very human characters beset by inhuman dangers.
When the world changes, will you change with it?
A boy who takes pleasure in causing pain meets a monster who can teach him to do much more. A Soulkeeper puts his reputation on the line to stop the abuse of soulless humans—while concealing his relationship with an "awakened" formerly soulless woman. A religious woman given unimaginable power over human souls by a monster struggles to determine right from wrong, faith from blasphemy. In a world where mountains walk, prayers can change the physical world, and magical creatures like talking rabbit-soldiers have awoken from a centurieslong slumber, no choice is simple. The Soulkeeper Devin has chosen to befriend creatures like the faery Tesmarie while his spellcasting brother-in-law, Tommy, believes the newly awakened magical creatures have as much right to the land as humans do. In a time when most humans are reacting with fear and anger to their changing world, seeing the world in shades of gray can be dangerous. Meanwhile, Devin’s sister, Adria, finds that her new powers are testing her faith and bringing up questions she’d rather not confront. As new magical threats to the human population arise, all of these characters will be pushed to their limits, and the decisions they make may determine the fate of humanity. Picking up where Soulkeeper (2019) left off, this second book in a planned trilogy raises the stakes for every character, complicating the moral choices they face. The plot rockets along from one magical battle to the next, but Dalglish deftly weaves in rich character development alongside all this action.
Fans will love the second installment of this dark fantasy about very human characters beset by inhuman dangers.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-41669-6
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Gwynne’s effort pales in comparison to George R.R. Martin’s gold-standard work, but it’s nothing bad; the story grinds to a...
A middling Middle Earth–ish extravaganza with all the usual thrills, chills, spills and frills.
All modern fantasy begins with J.R.R. Tolkien, and Tolkien begins with the Icelandic sagas and the Mabinogion. Debut author Gwynne’s overstuffed but slow-moving contribution to the genre—the first in a series, of course—wears the latter source on its sleeve: “Fionn ap Toin, Marrock ben Rhagor, why do you come here on this first day of the Birth Moon?” Why, indeed? Well, therein hangs the tale. The protagonist is a 14-year-old commoner named Corban, son of a swineherd, who, as happens in such things, turns out to be more resourceful than his porcine-production background might suggest. There are bad doings afoot in Tintagel—beg pardon, the Banished Lands—where nobles plot against nobles even as there are stirrings of renewed titanomachia, that war between giants and humans having given the place some of its gloominess. There’s treachery aplenty, peppered with odd episodes inspired by other sources, such as an Androcles-and-lion moment in which Corban rescues a fierce wolven (“rarely seen here, preferring the south of Ardan, regions of deep forest and sweeping moors, where the auroch herds roamed”). It’s a good move: You never can tell when a wolven ally will come in handy, especially when there are wyrms around.
Gwynne’s effort pales in comparison to George R.R. Martin’s gold-standard work, but it’s nothing bad; the story grinds to a halt at points, but at others, there’s plenty of action.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-39973-9
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
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