Doom is inevitable; it will be interesting (and no doubt, heart-wrenching) to see what form it will take.
This grimdark political fantasy thriller is the second of a trilogy chronicling the fall of an empire.
Imperial Justice Sir Konrad Vonvalt; his clerk (and the novel’s narrator), Helena Sedanka; and their two companions have traveled to Sova, capital of the Empire of the Wolf. There they intend to confront the traitorous Justices of the Magistratum, who have been sharing their secret magical knowledge with zealous priest Patria Bartholomew Claver, and gain the emperor’s assistance in going after Claver, who is currently raising an army and may have designs on the throne. But their efforts are stymied by the suspiciously timed kidnapping of the Emperor’s grandson, which Sir Konrad is ordered to investigate, and the debilitating illness afflicting Sir Konrad, the result of a hex cast by Claver. As Sir Konrad and his compatriots seek to solve a mystery, discover a cure, and find allies against Claver in an increasingly complex and treacherous political landscape, Helena battles both her feelings for Sir Konrad and her repugnance for some of his recent ruthless actions, which suggest that he is more and more willing to ignore the letter of the law in his pursuit of both justice and vengeance. While the previous installment, The Justice of Kings (2022), was pretty dark, this volume gets even grittier, as the remaining scraps of Helena’s naïveté about Sir Konrad’s character and the nature of his work are brutally burned away and any faint hope that law might win out against might and self-serving politicking is crushed out in a fairly definitive way. It is now obvious that this empire of fractious, recently conquered nations is beyond saving, and all the characters can do is fight toward preserving whatever safety they can. This book travels even further beyond the traveling investigator/justice dealer mold of Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma and van Gulik’s Judge Dee series and more squarely into territory reminiscent of Andrzej Sapkowksi’s Hussite trilogy, another complex and dark historical fantasy series inspired by medieval state-military-church political conflicts.
Doom is inevitable; it will be interesting (and no doubt, heart-wrenching) to see what form it will take.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9780316361682
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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