Two siblings search for a magical flower that will rouse their sister from her mystical slumber.
One day while exploring a nearby forest, siblings Jochen, Natalie and Bärbel discover weird, wonderful black flowers. Beautiful and elegant, the black flowers also exude an aura of horrible evil. Cousin Thorsten, who is accompanying the siblings, relates the legend of Schoenboeck, a powerful magician who laid a curse on the flowers—anyone who approached them would fall into a never-ending sleep. The only way to lift the curse is by using the alabaster roses that Schoenboeck keeps inside his castle, Drachrosenstein. When none of the others are looking, 6-year-old Bärbel gathers a few of the black flowers and instantly falls asleep. Jochen and Natalie determine that they will rescue Bärbel by finding the castle and bringing back the alabaster roses. As the adventure begins, like Alice in Wonderland, Jochen and Natlie are whisked into an enchanted otherworld where they meet an old man who gives them a magic locket that will show them the way to the castle. But others want the locket, especially the dark magician Gorkievich, who needs it to consummate his power and will do anything to obtain it. Jochen and Natalie venture forth, confronting fire-breathing dragons, mysterious caves, magic mirrors and impenetrable labyrinths. As Jochen and Natalie advance from one harrowing incident to another, Schoeffner interweaves fantastic action with overformal dialogue, like something from a Lovecraftian tale. The magicians, although supernaturally powerful, don’t have much of a chance against the two young siblings whose innocence and luck, along with a quixotic attitude, combine to make them invincible. Schoeffner’s command of the English language is, on the one hand, remarkable, employing multisyllabic words of erudition and sophistication. On the other hand, it’s evident that English is not the author’s native tongue because sentence structures exhibit less refinement and the book’s formatting, particularly the widespread, unconventional use of dashes to set off dialogue, is somewhat vexing. However, once the reader gets a handle on the unique prose and formatting, they don’t prove to be problems and even add a certain charm to the story. A typical fantasy tale of magic and monsters, with enough freshness to keep the pages turning.
Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456797447
Page Count: 390
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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