A worthy series kickoff with riveting characters and a world that readers will want to explore.
Debut author Hummel launches a sci-fi/fantasy series with the story of a young man in a post-apocalyptic America who bonds with a dragon.
Twenty-something Jared Cartwright is on his own in a far-future New York City that’s been ravaged by past nuclear wars. To avoid death by radiation, all humans, including Jared, must periodically inject themselves with microscopic nanites. One day, while searching for supplies, Jared finds a strange rock that generates electricity and visibly agitates the nanites in his injector. Out of curiosity, he injects these nanites into the rock, which turns out to be an egg. A fire dragon hatches; she goes by the name “Scarlet” and communicates with Jared telepathically. Because of their bond, Jared makes a formal vow to Scarlet’s dragon-queen mother to guard and protect her daughter. Fortunately, he also develops newfound abilities—for every hostile, mutated creature he kills, he earns nanites to bolster skills, such as “Heat Sight” and “Maximum Muscle.” Jared furthermore makes it his mission to aid Scarlet in her quest to help dragons re-emerge—as they’ve been hiding from humans underground for millennia. Along the way, Jared and Scarlet face numerous antagonists, including mutated monsters and other human survivors. Hummel’s tale is rife with elements of the LitRPG genre, which offers a fusion of sci-fi/fantasy literature and role-playing games. At the same time, the author also creates intriguing characters and an engaging fictional world. Although the narrative provides little backstory for Jared prior to his parents’ deaths, it meticulously establishes his and Scarlet’s camaraderie; this is helped by the fact that each character typically knows that the other is in trouble almost instantly. There’s also a potpourri of mutated beings, including a group of enslaved humans and some beasts whose mutations seem suspicious. Despite the fact that the story offers abundant exposition (via telepathic conversations), Hummel sets a firm pace that puts the heroes into frequent battles and confrontations with other perils.
A worthy series kickoff with riveting characters and a world that readers will want to explore.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73233-742-8
Page Count: 492
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The multitalented author of The Sandman graphic novels and last year’s Neverwhere charms again, with a deftly written fantasy adventure tale set in early Victorian England and enriched by familiar folk materials. In a rural town called Wall (so named for the stone bulwark that separates it from a mysterious meadow through which strange shapes are often seen moving), on “Market Day,” when the citizens of “Faerie” (land) mingle with humans, young Dunstan Thorn makes love to a bewitching maiden and is presented nine months afterward with an infant son (delivered from beyond the Wall). The latter, Tristran, grows up to fall in love himself and rashly promise his beloved that he’ll bring her the star they both observe falling from the sky. Tristran’s ensuing quest takes him deep into Faerie, and, unbeknownst to him, competition with the star’s other pursuers: three weird sisters (the Lilim), gifted with magical powers though still susceptible to “the snares of age and time”; and the surviving sons of the late Lord of Stormhold, accompanied everywhere by their several dead brothers (whom they happen to have murdered). Tristran finds his star (in human form, no less); survives outrageous tests and mishaps, including passage on a “sky-ship” and transformation into a dormouse; and, safely returned to Wall, acquires through a gracious act of renunciation his (long promised) “heart’s desire.” Gaiman blends these beguiling particulars skillfully in a comic romance, reminiscent of James Thurber’s fables, in which even throwaway minutiae radiate good-natured inventiveness (e.g., its hero’s narrow escape from a “goblin press-gang” seeking human mercenaries to fight “the goblins’ endless wars beneath the earth”). There are dozens of fantasy writers around reshaping traditional stories, but none with anything like Gaiman’s distinctive wit, warmth, and narrative energy. Wonderful stuff, for kids of all ages.
Pub Date: Jan. 6, 1999
ISBN: 0-380-97728-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1998
Some of the best pure storytelling around these days is being produced in the critically suspect genre of fantasy, and this exuberantly inventive first full-length novel, by the co-creator of the graphic series The Sandman (1996), is a state-of-the-art example. The protagonist, determinedly unheroic Richard Mayhew, is a young man up from the provinces and living in London, where he has found both job success and a lissome fiancee, Jessica. Soon, however, Richard meets a mysterious old woman who prophesies he'll embark on an adventure that "starts with doors." Sure enough, his fate becomes entwined with that of a beautiful waiflike girl who calls herself Door, and who is in flight from a pair of ageless hired assassins and in pursuit of the reason behind the murder of her family. Suddenly wrenched away from his quotidian life (people can no longer see or hear him), Richard follows Door underground to an alternative "London Below," where "people who have fallen through the cracks" live in a rigidly stratified mock-feudal society that parallels that of London Above. A parade of instructors and guides brings Richard and Door ever closer to understanding why her father was marked for death by the rulers of London Below, and prepares Richard to do battle with the (wonderfully loathsome) Great Beast of London. The ending is both a terrific surprise and a perfectly logical culmination of Richard's journey into the darkest recesses of his civilization and himself. Altogether, Gaiman's story is consistently witty, suspenseful, and hair-raisingly imaginative in its contemporary transpositions of familiar folk and mythic materials (one can read Neverwhere as a postmodernist punk Faerie Queene). Readers who've enjoyed the fantasy novels of Tim Powers and William Browning Spencer won't want to miss this one. And, yes, Virginia, there really are alligators in those sewers—and Gaiman makes you believe it.
Pub Date: July 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-380-97363-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1997
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