An epic fantasy romance with strong characters and an inventive quest.
This novel presents a romantic adventure through a long-distance psychic conversation.
As the story opens, Rose is a 16-year-old runaway working on a ship who is regularly having sexual entanglements in her dreams with a unicorn named Fiddler. She learns that Fid is actually a ghost possessing a dagger belonging and bonded to the ship’s captain, Osprey, with whom he is also romantically involved. In time, Rose decides to move on from the ship to pursue new opportunities, leaving Fid behind. Five years later, she hears him calling to her in a dream once again. Osprey’s ship, the Sufferance, was attacked and he was killed. Fid’s dagger is lost somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, and he has been quite lonely. The two immediately pick up their mental connection. In the years the two friends were apart, Rose became a sorcerer and discovered that she had sea-dragon blood in her ancestry. Now, she is slowly becoming a dragon mage and embarks on a quest to find Fid. During her journey, she communicates with “crocodilians” (even learning how to turn into one), communes with the great sea turtle Maelstrom, and bounces from port to port as she attempts to pinpoint Fid’s location. Fid, as he waits on the ocean floor, regales her with stories about his past life, both when he was a living unicorn as well as after he became a ghost with a dagger. As Fid eschews the moral depravity of his past, Rose tries to decide whether to become an immortal herself by going full dragon. This hefty adventure is written entirely in dialogue, lending it a quality of oral storytelling rarely seen in a novel (“Fiddler sighed. ‘Unicorns are…fertility creatures. Sort of really minor fertility gods. We come on a herd of appropriate creatures—that usually means horses or cows or deer or sheep—and we impregnate every female in the herd that isn’t too old or too young or already pregnant’ ”). The unusual format may prove unappealing to those who like lush fantasy descriptions and intricate worldbuilding. But Haynie (A Brief History of Gnolls, 2015) manages to weave the backgrounds of his two intriguing conversationalists into their current escapade quite seamlessly. This imaginative love story with vivid sea creatures should appeal to fantasy fans seeking a change of pace.
An epic fantasy romance with strong characters and an inventive quest.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-950237-03-6
Page Count: 660
Publisher: Spiral Path Publications
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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