An elite warrior must investigate the death of an emissary in this historical novel set in 17th-century Nigeria.
A royal emissary from the prosperous kingdom of Kano returns home gravely wounded—he has clearly been tortured. Before he succumbs to his injuries, he conveys a troubling message that Kano is threatened by a plot to destabilize it. He arrived on a horse different from his own, maybe a sign that he was kidnapped but subsequently escaped. In addition, he was transporting a classified communication from Kano’s ruler, Emir Ado Sanusi, to the Sultan of Sokoto. The sultan is the ruler of a neighboring kingdom with which Kano historically suffered tempestuous relations. Master Mansa, a Durbar peacekeeper—he keeps “peace only when there is none”—is faithfully dedicated to Kano, and is charged with investigating both the emissary’s death and his cryptic message. Accompanied by a young boy, Isa, a former enslaved person he purchased, Master Mansa travels to Sokoto as well as Katsina, a neighboring kingdom, to uncover the truth. Set upon in both places by well-trained assassins—he immediately recognizes these were not “local vagabonds operating in desperate times”—he correctly deduces that formidable forces intend to thwart his probe. Blackstaff deftly depicts the complex political circumstances that provide the context for Master Mansa’s mission. While Kano is enjoying a “rare time of peace and prosperity,” its neighbors suffer. The ruler of Sokoto is all but incapacitated by illness and his kingdom is plagued by famine while Katsina is overrun by corruption and decadence, a cesspool “nourished by violent crime, poverty and general desperation.” Moreover, Master Mansa is a gripping protagonist—almost impossibly courageous and wise, he’s unfailingly loyal, a moving personification of what Kano’s rivals lack morally.
A subtle but powerful tale of political intrigue and honor.Pub Date: May 25, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Running Wild Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: HISTORICAL FICTION | LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION
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Sure to enchant even those who have never played a video game in their lives, with instant cult status for those who have.
17
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The adventures of a trio of genius kids united by their love of gaming and each other.
When Sam Masur recognizes Sadie Green in a crowded Boston subway station, midway through their college careers at Harvard and MIT, he shouts, “SADIE MIRANDA GREEN. YOU HAVE DIED OF DYSENTERY!” This is a reference to the hundreds of hours—609 to be exact—the two spent playing “Oregon Trail” and other games when they met in the children’s ward of a hospital where Sam was slowly and incompletely recovering from a traumatic injury and where Sadie was secretly racking up community service hours by spending time with him, a fact which caused the rift that has separated them until now. They determine that they both still game, and before long they’re spending the summer writing a soon-to-be-famous game together in the apartment that belongs to Sam's roommate, the gorgeous, wealthy acting student Marx Watanabe. Marx becomes the third corner of their triangle, and decades of action ensue, much of it set in Los Angeles, some in the virtual realm, all of it riveting. A lifelong gamer herself, Zevin has written the book she was born to write, a love letter to every aspect of gaming. For example, here’s the passage introducing the professor Sadie is sleeping with and his graphic engine, both of which play a continuing role in the story: “The seminar was led by twenty-eight-year-old Dov Mizrah....It was said of Dov that he was like the two Johns (Carmack, Romero), the American boy geniuses who'd programmed and designed Commander Keen and Doom, rolled into one. Dov was famous for his mane of dark, curly hair, wearing tight leather pants to gaming conventions, and yes, a game called Dead Sea, an underwater zombie adventure, originally for PC, for which he had invented a groundbreaking graphics engine, Ulysses, to render photorealistic light and shadow in water.” Readers who recognize the references will enjoy them, and those who don't can look them up and/or simply absorb them. Zevin’s delight in her characters, their qualities, and their projects sprinkles a layer of fairy dust over the whole enterprise.
Sure to enchant even those who have never played a video game in their lives, with instant cult status for those who have.Pub Date: July 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-32120-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION
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An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
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Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION
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