A historically astute and rousing adventure.
A historical novel set in the early 15th century details an English soldier’s dangerous mission in hostile territory.
In 1423, Henry V, the Plantagenet king of England, lies on his deathbed and summons his brother, John the Duke of Bedford, to his side. While the war against France goes well, England is becoming perilously low on funds. But the king has a plan to raise nearly inexhaustible reserves and entrusts the execution of that endeavor to John. Henry was approached by Charles d’Evreux and offered access to a fortune if he could reestablish the Order of the Temple, a militant band of monks banned a hundred years ago by the French government, and return the lands stolen from the group. Over the years, the Templars amassed unfathomable wealth and are willing to part with a considerable portion of it to see France under the rule of a friendlier king. But there is a catch: that fortune is housed in Outremer, land governed by the Turks, who are sure to be antagonistic to grasping interlopers. John picks Capt. Richard Calveley to accompany him on the hazardous journey. But John is ultimately unable to neglect his duties on the home front, so he entrusts Richard with the operation. Meanwhile, Richard’s estate is supervised in his absence by Father Hugh. The priest is blackmailed by Richard’s dastardly cousin, Geoffrey, who is obsessed with winning the ownership of the property. Father Hugh is caught in an indiscreet relationship with a married woman he loves and must choose between his public mortification and loyalty to Richard. This is the second installment in Tallon’s Richard Calveley Trilogy (The Lion and the Lily, 2016), and while a narrative ligature clearly runs from one book to the other, this stirring work can be read on its own. The author packs a lot of drama into a relatively short novel—there’s romance, political intrigue, religion, and war (Richard is shown to be an empathetic commander who is beloved by his men: “One glance from those jade green eyes and the company would cheerfully follow him to the ends of the earth”). Despite the various threads, the plot never seems cramped and is lucidly and briskly developed. In addition, the tale’s historical details are scrupulously presented, creating an aura of authenticity.
A historically astute and rousing adventure.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5462-8239-6
Page Count: 278
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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