Great fun, with nonstop action and with an escape hatch that would allow—dare we hope?—a sequel.
A thrills-and-spills conclusion to the adventures of Sancia Grado.
Bennett concludes his Founders trilogy, preceded by Foundryside (2018) and Shorefall (2020), with characteristically high-spirited mayhem. The magic of scriving, which is to say, melding two objects together to form weapons, tools, and the like, has been extended to humans and even whole cities, so that the medieval-tinged metropolis of Tevanne now roams the land, searching for transubstantiation: “Tevanne did not wish to have a body anymore. It had calculated many times that, should it shed this corporeal form, its intelligence should still persist in all the various lexicons and rigs throughout its empire.” Against the bad-tempered and ill-intentioned Tevanne stand characters we’ve met in Bennett’s previous volumes, but with considerable attention given here to their backstories: We learn, for example, that the keylike creature called Clef (naturally) once took quite different form, that Berenice and Sancia are more than comrades in battle, and that Gregor Dandolo has more resources than hitherto hinted at. And then there’s Crasedes Magnus, who has strong skills as a shape-shifter and, mercurially, is good one minute and bad the next; it’s for good reason that Clef in particular harbors deep hatred for him. Some of Bennett’s yarn concerns the origins of scriving, a bit of technological sorcery that, often put to bad uses itself, reveals some good sides as well and produces a happy ending—at least for the survivors. Bennett’s language sometimes runs blue, sometimes knotty (“The Keyship’s espringal batteries wheeled about and sprayed the night skies as the shrieker bolts descended”), and readers will be lost in its idiosyncrasies and the story’s plot turns if they haven’t read the first two books. The effort to do so is well worth it, though, for Bennett is a master of worldbuilding, and for all the novel’s far-fetched moments, everything seems perfectly logical on its own terms.
Great fun, with nonstop action and with an escape hatch that would allow—dare we hope?—a sequel.Pub Date: June 28, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2067-9
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.
In 16th-century Madrid, a crypto-Jew with a talent for casting spells tries to steer clear of the Inquisition.
Luzia Cotado, a scullion and an orphan, has secrets to keep: “It was a game she and her mother had played, saying one thing and thinking another, the bits and pieces of Hebrew handed down like chipped plates.” Also handed down are “refranes”—proverbs—in “not quite Spanish, just as Luzia was not quite Spanish.” When Luzia sings the refranes, they take on power. “Aboltar cazal, aboltar mazal” (“A change of scene, a change of fortune”) can mend a torn gown or turn burnt bread into a perfect loaf; “Quien no risica, no rosica” (“Whoever doesn’t laugh, doesn’t bloom”) can summon a riot of foliage in the depths of winter. The Inquisition hangs over the story like Chekhov’s famous gun on the wall. When Luzia’s employer catches her using magic, the ambitions of both mistress and servant catapult her into fame and danger. A new, even more ambitious patron instructs his supernatural servant, Guillén Santángel, to train Luzia for a magical contest. Santángel, not Luzia, is the familiar of the title; he has been tricked into trading his freedom and luck to his master’s family in exchange for something he no longer craves but can’t give up. The novel comes up against an issue common in fantasy fiction: Why don’t the characters just use their magic to solve all their problems? Bardugo has clearly given it some thought, but her solutions aren’t quite convincing, especially toward the end of the book. These small faults would be harder to forgive if she weren’t such a beautiful writer. Part fairy tale, part political thriller, part romance, the novel unfolds like a winter tree bursting into unnatural bloom in response to one of Luzia’s refranes, as she and Santángel learn about power, trust, betrayal, and love.
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781250884251
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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
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