In his first new novel in more than a decade, Beagle creates an intimate drama between the members of a family who are slowly blindsided by myth and magic spilling into their ordinary world.
Abe and Joanna are two halves of a comfortable couple who have been together for 22 years but continue to live apart. Abe is a retired history professor who lives on an island in the Puget Sound, writing a book about 14th-century European history and indulging a fondness for playing blues harmonica. Joanna is a flight attendant who lives in Seattle, stubbornly marching toward her own retirement and continually worrying about her daughter, Lily. Beagle (A Fine and Private Place, 2015, etc.) crafts a convincing portrait of mature happiness between personable characters who are imperfect, but lovingly familiar, and an idyllic take on the Puget Sound region. When the quiet rhythm of their lives is interrupted by the appearance of the extraordinary Lioness Lazos, a strange and strangely beautiful waitress who seems to bend people and nature around her, the reader might mourn the intrusion by enchantment. The most compelling parts of this novel are the people in it, who remain vividly distinct, compellingly ordinary, and utterly believable despite the encroaching magic. Moments between characters are described with details that fit exactly—“she thought she could hear his heart beating through the phone, as though they were resting after love”—and their creeping disappointments feel familiar to anyone who has ever been older than they wished. The fantastical elements build with a satisfying sense of reality becoming unmoored and emotions running high, but when they crash in at full force with revelations pinned on one of the most familiar of Greek myths, the story threatens to capsize and wobbles as it reaches the end.
A beautifully detailed fantasy about love, magic, and age that doesn’t quite reconcile its reality with the myths that inspire it.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61696-244-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Tachyon
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Categories: FANTASY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | FANTASY
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PERSPECTIVES
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
21
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Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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