A tale of war, love and religious strife by a promising new novelist.
A young man struggles against family, church and state to find love and a life of his own.
In Wagner’s debut historical novel, Spain’s Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand are waging war to reclaim the country from Portugal and the Moors. In the process, they expel Muslims and Jews and seek to establish a nation of pure blood. In this context of war, racism and religious fervor, a young man named Casiano comes of age with difficulty. Born with a birthmark interpreted to be the mark of Satan to a Christian mother in a Muslim household, the child doesn’t have the odds in his favor. Competition between Casiano and his half brother, Juan Diego, dominates Casiano’s childhood. While the half brothers are riding through treacherous passes, a pig charges them, startles Juan Diego’s horse and sends Juan Diego plummeting over a cliff to his death. From that point on, Casiano labors under the presumption of guilt for the loss and under the enmity of his stepfather. He is imprisoned but eventually taken in by monks. He falls in love with a Jewish converso named Perla, and he fights in the many battles that rage at the time. He also fights for the life of Perla, who is nearly burned at the stake for heresy. Eventually, Casiano and Perla set out to make a life for themselves free from the oppression of church and state. Wagner’s well-researched novel brings the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella to life. The story is a little slow paced at times, and the dialogue can be stiff, sounding more like that of a period-piece drama than natural speech, a danger in historical novels. The novel also has some predictable plot elements. Nonetheless, Wagner’s novel rises above these limitations. It’s a lively, historically detailed narrative, filled with well-rounded characters. Readers of historical fiction interested in the time period will find much to enjoy.
A tale of war, love and religious strife by a promising new novelist.Pub Date: March 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1477407448
Page Count: 332
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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