Start of a new series—maybe (Anthony isn't sure)—entitled Geodyssey, attempting to frame, in ecological terms, no less than the entire history of the human species: Now that's ambition. In a series of stories—often no more than vignettes—braced by paragraphs of quasi-facts, Anthony writes about two families whose members are continually reborn: firetender Scorch, his mate Ember, and their daughter, Crystal; Bunny, her mate Blaze, and their son, Stone. The stories begin in the days of Lucy the Australopithecine, and swiftly move through Handy Man and Erect Man to the discovery of Australia, Neanderthals, cave art, the discovery of America, the beginning of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent, an early city in Anatolia, war in Mesopotamia, contending Hittite and Egyptian empires, Etruscans and Romans, the struggle for control of the Silk Road in the first century, the T'ang dynasty in China, 13th-century Lithuania, 17th-century Kuba (Congo), India and Britain in the 19th century, and, finally, starvation and cannibalism in a 21st-century America beset by climatic change. Throughout history, Ember and Blaze desire each other, but something always intervenes—until the last episode when they come together and recall their multiple pasts. The prolific Anthony (most recent solo outing: Demons Don't Dream, 1992) means well but all too often is astoundingly wrongheaded. Again, many of the stories here are a long way short of compelling—with the author's juvenile tendencies well to the fore. Amiable twaddle, then, intended for a wider audience than usual.
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1993
ISBN: 0812533666
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1993
A new series starts off with a bang.
A queen and her young daughter are forced to separate and go into hiding when a corrupt politician tries to take over the kingdom.
Queen Cressa of Weirandale is worried about her 8-year-old daughter, the “princella” Cerúlia. The people of Weirandale worship a water spirit, Nargis, who grants each queen a special gift called a Talent. Cressa herself is able to meddle with memories, for example, and her mother possessed supernatural strategic abilities that served her well in battle. Cerúlia, however, appears to have none, because surely her insistence that she can talk to animals is only her young imagination running wild. When Cerúlia’s many pets warn her about assassins creeping into the royal chambers, the girl is able to save herself and her mother. Cressa uses her Talent, which actually extends to forcing anyone to tell her the truth, to root out traitors among the aristocracy, led by the power-hungry Lord Matwyck. Fearing for her daughter’s life and her own, Cressa takes Cerúlia and flees. Thinking Cerúlia will be safer away from her mother, Cressa takes the girl to a kind peasant family and adjusts their memories so they believe Cerúlia is their adopted daughter. Kozloff’s debut is the first of four Nine Realms books, and Tor plans to publish them over just four months. Luckily, the series opener is a strong start, so readers will be grateful for the short wait before Book 2. Kozloff sets a solid stage with glimpses into other characters and nations while keeping the book together with a clear, propulsive plot.
A new series starts off with a bang.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-16854-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.
In the first volume of a trilogy, a fresh cataclysm besets a physically unstable world whose ruling society oppresses its most magically powerful inhabitants.
The continent ironically known as the Stillness is riddled with fault lines and volcanoes and periodically suffers from Seasons, civilization-destroying tectonic catastrophes. It’s also occupied by a small population of orogenes, people with the ability to sense and manipulate thermal and kinetic energy. They can quiet earthquakes and quench volcanoes…but also touch them off. While they’re necessary, they’re also feared and frequently lynched. The “lucky” ones are recruited by the Fulcrum, where the brutal training hones their powers in the service of the Empire. The tragic trap of the orogene's life is told through three linked narratives (the link is obvious fairly quickly): Damaya, a fierce, ambitious girl new to the Fulcrum; Syenite, an angry young woman ordered to breed with her bitter and frighteningly powerful mentor and who stumbles across secrets her masters never intended her to know; and Essun, searching for the husband who murdered her young son and ran away with her daughter mere hours before a Season tore a fiery rift across the Stillness. Jemisin (The Shadowed Sun, 2012, etc.) is utterly unflinching; she tackles racial and social politics which have obvious echoes in our own world while chronicling the painfully intimate struggle between the desire to survive at all costs and the need to maintain one’s personal integrity. Beneath the story’s fantastic trappings are incredibly real people who undergo intense, sadly believable pain.
With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-22929-6
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
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