Secret Riven’s tale will charm patient lovers of fantasy but likely frustrate readers looking for a thrilling adventure.
Deep within a realm of fantasy, a silent girl keeps a secret even she doesn’t know the measure of.
This sequel to Domingue’s The Mapmaker’s War (2013) picks up the tale of a strange kingdom generations after Aoife’s story ended. The characters in Domingue’s Keeper of Tales trilogy are tenuously threaded together not by blood but by unique storytelling talents. In this tale, Evensong Riven, known as Secret, is born to Zavet, a cold and enigmatic mother, who translates manuscripts written in languages all but forgotten. Secret’s father, Bren, a respected historian, uses his skill in telling the tales of the past to help land speculators acquire properties. After her beloved father leaves for work each day, Secret plays alone, listening to Zavet muttering over her work. Mute and painfully lonely, Secret discovers that she can communicate with trees and squirrels; all of nature seems to have stories and visions to share with her. Although her classmates taunt her, Secret finds a few friends, including Auntie, who holds her hand and takes her to children’s shows; Prince Nikolas, who shares some of her adventures; and Old Woman, who cautions Secret that she will have to make a difficult choice someday. When Secret is 12, her mother is asked to translate a manuscript that seems dangerous. Suddenly, Secret falls ill with a fever, awakening to discover that she does, indeed, have a secret of her own. After her mother’s unexpected death, the mysterious manuscript disappears, and the powerful, delightfully named magnate Fewmany takes a peculiar interest in her. Domingue lushly layers Secret’s hopes, dreams and visions. Yet the pace is terribly slow, perhaps in an attempt to match the bewildered Secret’s struggle to make sense of her world.
Secret Riven’s tale will charm patient lovers of fantasy but likely frustrate readers looking for a thrilling adventure.Pub Date: May 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4516-8891-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A somewhat fragmentary nocturnal shadows Jim Nightshade and his friend Will Halloway, born just before and just after midnight on the 31st of October, as they walk the thin line between real and imaginary worlds. A carnival (evil) comes to town with its calliope, merry-go-round and mirror maze, and in its distortion, the funeral march is played backwards, their teacher's nephew seems to assume the identity of the carnival's Mr. Cooger. The Illustrated Man (an earlier Bradbury title) doubles as Mr. Dark. comes for the boys and Jim almost does; and there are other spectres in this freakshow of the mind, The Witch, The Dwarf, etc., before faith casts out all these fears which the carnival has exploited... The allusions (the October country, the autumn people, etc.) as well as the concerns of previous books will be familiar to Bradbury's readers as once again this conjurer limns a haunted landscape in an allegory of good and evil. Definitely for all admirers.
Pub Date: June 15, 1962
ISBN: 0380977273
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962
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