Moxon’s storyline isn’t easy to follow, but it makes for a tasty entertainment.
Sprawling, postmodern shaggy dog debut novel about a strange city made even stranger by new arrivals from the hinterlands.
Someplace in the decaying industrial heartland, inside a “gray donut of shuttered factories,” lies a place called “Loony Island,” most of whose residents live in Stalinist apartment blocks. The name is well earned if accidental, for in one of its quadrants stands a psychiatric hospital whose residents have been released to the streets, ministered to by an apparently self-appointed priest, bearded and denim-clad, who funds his church by means of a fat trust fund. Alas, Loony Island is run by a cabal of criminals who don’t have much time for the new insane constituency except to figure out how to rob them, of which Father Julius decidedly doesn’t approve. Among the bad guys are a would-be writer who’s “shit at it” and a young woman, tough as iron, who is far and away more competent than anyone else in the gang. Their efforts pale against the arrival of a very bad man from Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, home of Dollyworld and some very strange doings. Morris is on the trail of a young man named Gordy who appears to Father Julius as a flickering apparition. Morris, a Keyser Söze of the Smokies, drops his enemies, perceived and real, into “oubliettes,” or dungeonlike boxes, of which he is the proud inventor; it makes good sense, then, that he should tumble into a sewer whose manhole cover has been spirited away by the local tweakers. What Gordy has that Morris wants is—well, call it an instrument that allows “control over everything in the universe.” Against this background there are all sorts of memorable characters, including murderous rednecks from the Deliverance cutting-room floor, a bearded lady from a traveling circus, and the ever elusive Gordy’s worried father, who swears that he’ll never go back to Pigeon Forge as long as he lives. If the yarn doesn’t always add up and runs a bit long, it’s good fun to wind the characters up and watch them go.
Moxon’s storyline isn’t easy to follow, but it makes for a tasty entertainment.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61219-798-2
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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