The second novel from the Order series picks up smoothly from the first installment (Geist, 2010), continuing the fantasy adventure with a mix of romance and power play by the world's deities.
Deacons Sorcha Faris and her partner Merrick Chambers have emerged from their last adventure only to find themselves in the midst of another when the pair is assigned to escort the Emperor's delegation to Orithal. At the same time, the Emperor’s sister, the Grand Duchess Zofiya, is approached by the goddess Hatipai for her own ends. Faris’ lover, Raed, enters the scene with a price on his head and inhabited by the geistlord Rossin, as he attempts to track down his kidnapped sister. The storylines come together predictably as the entire cast of characters is drawn to Orithal at the same time as a series of brutal murders occur in the city. Complications arise for the Deacons and their order when the taste of power sways parts of their group. An agreeable novel that will appeal to the paranormal romance and steampunk crowds: a book heavy on the fantastic, but one that treads over paths long since forged.
Pub Date: June 28, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-441-02051-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
A striking literary fantasy informed by Arden's deep knowledge of and affection for this time and place.
A satisfying conclusion to a trilogy set in medieval times in the area on the verge of becoming Russia.
In a luxuriously detailed yet briskly suspenseful follow-up to The Bear and the Nightingale (2017) and The Girl in the Tower (2018), Arden's historically based fantasy follows heroic Vasya—a young woman with a strong connection to the spirits of the place where she lives—as she attempts to save her family and her country from evil forces. Because the novel starts with a bang where the preceding volume left off, with Moscow nearly burned to a crisp by a Firebird imperfectly controlled by Vasya, readers are advised to backtrack to the two earlier books rather than attempt to sort out all the characters and backstory on the fly. Among the humans are Vasya's sister, Olga, compromised by her desire for wealth and position; her brother, Sasha, a monk with a taste for the military life; Grand Prince Dmitrii; and corrupt priest Konstantin. Among the inhuman are the warring brothers Morozko, the winter-king with whom Vasya conducts a conflicted romance, and Medved, a demon addicted to chaos. Arden keeps the narrative fresh by sending Vasya questing into fantastic realms, each with its own demanding set of rules and its own alluring or forbidding geography, and by introducing new “chyerti,” demons or spirits, including an officious little mushroom spirit who indiscriminately plies Vasya with fungi, some edible and some distinctly not. Fans of Russian mythology will be pleased to find that Baba Yaga puts in a cameo appearance to straighten out some of the complicated genealogy. The trilogy leads up to the Battle of Kulikovo, which many consider the beginning of a united Russia. Arden neatly establishes parallels between Vasya's internal struggles, between attachment and freedom or the human world and the spiritual one, for example, and those taking place in the world around her.
A striking literary fantasy informed by Arden's deep knowledge of and affection for this time and place.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-88599-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For die-hard mermaid-fiction lovers only.
When a young librarian comes into possession of the diary of a traveling circus from more than 200 years ago, he decides the book may hold clues to a family mystery he needs to solve to save his sister’s life.
Narrator Simon and his younger sister, Enola, grew up in an 18th-century house on a bluff overlooking Long Island Sound. Taking after her mother, a former circus performer who drowned herself when Simon was 7, Enola travels with a carnival as a tarot card reader. Simon is still living in their dangerously dilapidated family home when, out of the blue on one June day, he receives a book from an antiquarian bookseller, who had noticed Simon's grandmother's name inside. Soon Simon discovers a frightening pattern among his female ancestors, all unnaturally good swimmers, all drowning as young women on July 24. If this “coincidence” sounds a bit far-fetched, it sets the bar for the novel’s credibility. Swyler intercuts Simon’s present drama—intensifying research into the diary’s history, loss of his job at the local library, incipient but already rocky love affair with fellow librarian Alice, return home of Enola, irretrievable collapse of the family manse—with the romantic tragedy of Amos, a traveling circus performer, and Evangeline, an aquatic performer with a guilty secret. Born in the 1780s and abandoned by his parents, Amos is mute when he joins a traveling troupe to perform a disappearing act as a “Wild Boy.” The fortuneteller takes him under her wing, teaching him to read the future. But despite her warnings, he falls for the dangerously mysterious Evangeline. She has his baby girl, and the havoc that follows leads straight to the curse that Simon, a whiny loser, is frantic to solve before someone else dies. A bit fey, even as romantic whimsy.
For die-hard mermaid-fiction lovers only.Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05480-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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