An adventure of eye-opening cleverness.
This epic-fantasy debut sees a thief unwittingly unleash a demon that feeds on wizards.
There are thousands of kingdoms in the World Belt. Fistmar, a lieutenant in the Thieves Guild, hails from the opulent city of Aranvail. After copying the secret logbook of his boss, Gloster, Fistmar heads to Schtalegaard. There, he robs the foolish Prince Caolan, who’s passed out after a night of drink and gambling. Fistmar later finds himself imprisoned for the prince’s murder, although he claims he’s not a killer; still, Mikhael Schtalfir, Duke Schtalegaard’s castellan, plans to torture the thief to death. Luckily, Fistmar possesses a false, magical tooth—a gift from the wizard Maevendin—that helps him pick the lock and escape his dungeon cell. Yet as he’s running through the labyrinthine prison beneath the Duke’s castle, the tooth seems to guide him. He finds a chamber of blue stone, and within it is a door that the wizard Faeramivor, who worked alongside Mikhael, warns him not to open. But open it he does, releasing a demon that explosively drains Faeramivor’s essence. Fistmar uses the ensuing chaos to head for Aranvail, seeking to clear his name of the Prince’s murder. However, a trio of warrior spirits tell him, “You freed the demon, and in doing so, you were bound to it.” In this striking debut, author Macdonald breaks from the epic-fantasy herd with electric prose and a true sense of the cinematic. Major characters receive memorable introductions, including Miranna, the famous, beautiful gambler whom Fistmar loves; and Norvik, who reluctantly helps him escape Aranvail’s treachery. The demon is fabulously described: “Teeth swam beneath its skin, to sometimes tear through in rictus grins, or to fly forward on tentacle limbs.” Macdonald also has great fun with magic, employing portals controlled by warlocks called the Scarlet Brotherhood, and Soulstones that can transfer spirits to fresh bodies. The worldbuilding and plot never compete with each other, resulting in an excellent series foundation.
An adventure of eye-opening cleverness.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9979231-1-7
Page Count: 462
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Twenty New England horror shorts by Stephen King (and a painfully lofty introduction by old pro John D. MacDonald). King, of course, is the 30-year-old zillionaire who poured the pig's blood on Carrie, woke the living dead in 'Salem's Lot, and gave a bad name to precognition in The Shining. The present collection rounds up his magazine pieces, mainly from Cavalier, and also offers nine stories not previously published. He is as effective in the horror vignette as in the novel. His big opening tale, "Jerusalem's Lot"—about a deserted village—is obviously his first shot at 'Salem's Lot and, in its dependence on a gigantic worm out of Poe and Lovecraft, it misses the novel's gorged frenzy of Vampireville. But most of the other tales go straight through you like rats' fangs. "Graveyard Shift" is about cleaning out a long unused factory basement that has a subbasement—a hideous colony of fat giant blind legless rats that are mutating into bats. It's a story you may wish you hadn't read. You'll enjoy the laundry mangle that becomes possessed and begins pressing people into bedsheets (don't think about that too much), a flu bug that destroys mankind and leaves only a beach blanket party of teenagers ("Night Surf"), and a beautiful lady vampire and her seven-year-old daughter abroad in a Maine blizzard ("One for the Road"). Bizarre dripperies, straight out of Tales from the Crypt comics. . . a leprous distillation.
Pub Date: Jan. 20, 1977
ISBN: 0385129912
Page Count: 367
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1977
BOOK TO SCREEN
Stephen King’s “Jerusalem’s Lot” to Be Epix Show
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
War is hell in this novel of inspired absurdity.
Hailed as heroes on a stateside tour before returning to Iraq, Bravo Squad discovers just what it has been fighting for.
Though the shellshocked humor will likely conjure comparisons with Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five, the debut novel by Fountain (following his story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, 2006) focuses even more on the cross-promotional media monster that America has become than it does on the absurdities of war. The entire novel takes place over a single Thanksgiving Day, when the eight soldiers (with their memories of the two who didn’t make it) find themselves at the promotional center of an all-American extravaganza, a nationally televised Dallas Cowboys football game. Providing the novel with its moral compass is protagonist Billy Lynn, a 19-year-old virgin from small-town Texas who has been inflated into some kind of cross between John Wayne and Audie Murphy for his role in a rescue mission documented by an embedded Fox News camera. In two days, the Pentagon-sponsored “Victory Tour” will end and Bravo will return to the business as usual of war. In the meantime, they are dealing with a producer trying to negotiate a film deal (“Think Rocky meets Platoon,” though Hilary Swank is rumored to be attached), glad-handing with the corporate elite of Cowboy fandom (and ownership), and suffering collateral damage during a halftime spectacle with Beyoncé. Over the course of this long, alcohol-fueled day, Billy finds himself torn, as he falls in love (and lust) with a devout Christian cheerleader and listens to his sister try to persuade him that he has done his duty and should refuse to go back. As “Americans fight the war daily in their strenuous inner lives,” Billy and his foxhole brethren discover treachery and betrayal beyond anything they’ve experienced on the battlefield.
War is hell in this novel of inspired absurdity.Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-088559-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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