Fans of paranormal fiction and of Vincent’s previous work (The Stars Never Rise, 2015, etc.) should enjoy the unusual...
This novel begins a dark and moody new series set among circus freaks and cryptids.
In Vincent’s story, the creatures from various world mythologies are very real. Werewolves, sphinxes, Minotaurs, and many others populate the pages. But the main character, Delilah, is one of the most puzzling, because she lives most of her life convinced she’s human. Only when a vicious act sparks her instinctive violent reaction does her true nature reveal itself: she is a most rare cryptid. The response by law enforcement is swift and brutal. She's declared nonhuman, stripped of all rights, and sold as property to a traveling carnival. Over the course of several weeks, she's caged, brutalized, and terrorized. However, with the help of her handler, Gallagher, she also discovers the truth of her nature and gets the chance to blaze a path to aid her fellow cryptids. Delilah is an intelligent protagonist who's easy to root for, especially as so much seems set against her. There is extraordinary injustice in this world. Cryptids are legally property, and they're treated horribly by nearly all humans, enduring a miserable existence only they can understand. Vincent summons bold and vivid imagery with her writing, especially with the otherworldly aspects of the carnival. There are many named characters and many mythologies to catch up on, which slows the pace somewhat. The shifting point of view can be jarring, since Delilah tells her story in the first person, while all the other narrating characters are presented in the third. And while the ending is suitably bombastic, it feels more like a pause before the already-scheduled sequel.
Fans of paranormal fiction and of Vincent’s previous work (The Stars Never Rise, 2015, etc.) should enjoy the unusual premise of the novel, but the violence throughout may limit its appeal.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7783-1605-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...
An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.
Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.Pub Date: March 6, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-70376-4
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
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