A strong pace and scenes offset flat characterizations.
Three Aelfene kingdoms have collapsed and a war has begun in the prequel to and third volume in the wholesome Brazen Serpent Chronicles series.
Several generations ago, dragons and the Aelfene people lived together in unity until a malevolent creature discovered the dark arts and an ability to control others. When the new installment in their saga opens, three Aelfene kingdoms have collapsed and war has commenced: It’s darkness versus light. This prequel by Baird (Talon of Light, 2004, and The Caduceus, 2006) centers on two heroes: Meliandra, a reverent leader who protects what’s left of Aelfene civilization in a hidden territory, and Arnor, a young man charged with a complicated mission that includes lost gems, undead captives and bittersweet love. Readers familiar with the series may remember his cameo in an earlier book and recognize what he’s creating—a weapon for a future king capable of restoring order. The overarching good-versus-evil theme of the series continues, as do the religious undertones, which appear frequently. The novel casts the Aelfene people as the same as humans save for one key feature: They choose to live by “high principles,” with unwavering faith in “the powers of light,” as recounted in the “Manual of Discipline.” The main characters and those who help them are righteous: They make sacrifices for the better of all, practicing what they preach. Without an Achilles’ heel, they’re one-dimensional, but the book has a quick pace and vivid, sensory imagery. Every page contains dramatic action or vital plot information, though a break here or there to digest it all wouldn’t have hurt. Readers may pick up on inconsistencies between this book and others: the back story Meliandra recounted as an old woman does not seem to match the one elaborated on here.
A strong pace and scenes offset flat characterizations.Pub Date: July 6, 2011
ISBN: http://www.puddlesof
Page Count: 220
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An enjoyable, eloquently told tale.
Sutherland’s (Windsong, 2008) contemporary novel takes readers to the small, fictional Australian town of Trundle, offering a peek at the lives of its residents over the course of a year.
Grown sisters Ronnie and Marie have returned to their family home in Trundle, each of them recovering from a personal heartbreak. They’re not sure what to make of their troublesome neighbors, the Lals, who have built a large, modern house next door. The sisters and the Lals are at the core of the story, but Sutherland expertly weaves the lives of various residents into a rich tapestry. Trundle possesses many elements found in any small town: mom-and-pop shops, a struggling economy and a colorful cast of characters. What sets it apart from other towns is a place called Pelican, a commune founded in the 1980s on the outskirts of town. Marie, a former resident who left Pelican under a cloud of disgrace, returns to find she is welcome in the community; burned out from work, Ronnie finds herself restored by her stay there. Meanwhile, the grieving Mr. Lal sees Pelican as the perfect spot to build his own version of the Taj Mahal in tribute to his deceased wife, and his son, Vijay, struggles to find himself and the meaning of life. The story shifts perspective, often jumping among the central protagonists and various Trundle figures, giving readers an intimate view of the town. But well-defined, realistically drawn characters enable readers to easily follow these shifts in perspective. In spite of occasional scandals and disturbing events, Sutherland’s novel is, at heart, a quiet story of ordinary people dealing with everyday problems. Her graceful descriptions—“Through the open window flowed a deep and restful stillness punctuated by the chime of birds and the tolling of frogs”—bring to life both the landscape and the people who inhabit it.
An enjoyable, eloquently told tale.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-1426904394
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Provides the type of engrossing hodgepodge of memoir, philosophy, literary theory and metaphysics growing more...
What if reams of our conventional knowledge are just flat-out wrong—what if, for instance, the division between “perceiver” and “perceived” is erroneous?
Peace theorizes about the nature of human existence and how we interact with our environment. Offering argument as well as description, Peace posits that the prevailing mode of seeing the self as “separate” from what it seen, as well as from others, is unproductive and wrongheaded. Touching on his work with the disabled, he recounts his own life experience, mixing personal anecdotes with excerpts from the writings of American poets Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, e. e. cummings and Emily Dickinson, as well as the British poets T. S. Eliot and John Keats. The poets serve as de facto guides through this book, as Peace looks to them to provide examples of the kind of consciousness he means to exalt: one where a sense of the self as an entity divorced from the rest of reality is overcome. The effects of this practice, Peace states, will benefit not just humankind, but the entire earth. His scope ranges from the perspective of the individual to the universe itself. At points, his reasoning becomes lost in insufficiently defined terminology or in the abstract nature of its own ideas. Sometimes, it’s unclear whose ideas are whose: “Without consciousness, there is no ‘time’ ” is essentially a paraphrase of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. Likewise, Peace’s discussions of perception in relation to the self might have benefited from an examination of the philosophical literature around that topic. There are platitudes, but there are also real insights, as well as a tone that indicates a passionate but tempered candidness. Though the collection as a whole seems elliptical, and at times repetitive, it’s by and large an intelligent project that aims to explore its subject matter outside of the confines of genre boundaries. It is at once an original statement and a bibliography of sources for further reading. Peace’s treatise, with its aggressive tone and pace, will not be for everyone. But this may be a strength, not a limitation.
Provides the type of engrossing hodgepodge of memoir, philosophy, literary theory and metaphysics growing more endangered—and perhaps more valuable—in book culture every day.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 391
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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