The worldbuilding is patchy in places, but a finely drawn web of convincing characters with complex relationships wins out.
In a world where rulers hold power through their ties to the great “Immanent Powers” that inhabit their lands, peaceful princess Kehera of Harivir and the infamous Wolf Duke of Pohorir must work together to stop a mad king and a power-hungry Immanent.
When the King of Emmer threatens Kehera’s country, he offers to spare her people the wrath of his Immanent spirit if she agrees to marry him. Kehera’s father promises to rescue her as soon as he can, and so Kehera agrees to take the risk and go to Emmer, hoping she can buy some time. But when she arrives at his court, she discovers that a terrible Immanent Power, more powerful than she imagined possible, has taken the king over completely. Kehera flees and eventually finds herself at the mercy of Innisth, better known as the Wolf Duke. Innisth has been hiding his Power’s strength from his own king for some time, and he can’t help but see Kehera, with her tie to her country’s Power, as an opportunity to finally break free. But the more he grows to care for her, the harder it becomes to use her for his own ends. Though the Immanent Power mythology is often convoluted and the prose can skew purple (“In this, you are the foundation of all my hope, and the tomb of all my fear”), Neumeier (The Mountain of Kept Memory, 2016, etc.) knows how to balance fantasy with character. The specifics of which Power can do what and why get fuzzy, but the characters' emotional experiences keep the story grounded. The supporting cast is large enough to provide depth and interest but small enough to be memorable.
The worldbuilding is patchy in places, but a finely drawn web of convincing characters with complex relationships wins out.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-4897-0
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
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