An exciting, genre-melding journey into magical realms and the mending power of love.
Secret Riven—archivist to the mysterious Fewmany, a man who controls nearly every industry in Rothwyke—finally has the opportunity to decode the arcane manuscript her mother left behind. But the translation may throw everything she holds dear into turmoil.
This compelling conclusion to Domingue’s (The Chronicle of Secret Riven, 2014, etc.) Keeper of Tales trilogy deftly twines together elements from fairy tales, the gothic, and the quest journey into a mythology for the fantasy realm of Rothwyke. Rejected from the high academies, most likely because she wears skirts, Secret accepts a job as archivist of the vast libraries of mysterious magnate Fewmany, ne Lesmore Bellwether. Fewmany’s mansion is a veritable Gothic labyrinth, riddled with hidden rooms, locked chambers—all must remain locked, Secret is reminded—and restricted groves. While her beloved Nikolas, Prince of the Realm, journeys on goodwill visits to neighboring kingdoms, Secret finds herself drawn deeply into Fewmany’s decadent world. Soon she has left her father’s home to rent rooms in a less respectable ward and begins drinking wine, attending dinner parties with actors and intellectual glitterati, and even joining in the debauched revelries of a masquerade ball. Eager to put behind her the difficulties of her special abilities, she’s tried to ignore the animals and bees who seem desperate to communicate with her, yet Fewmany’s intentions for her will demand all of her talents and courage. Fewmany sets Secret on a quest that will at last expose the meaning of the symbols she’s dreamed of since childhood, her ruptures into another world, the arcane manuscript, and the mystery of her mother’s ancestry. Fortuitously, Nikolas returns and joins Secret. But the quest will release a Plague of Silences that will disrupt and utterly change their world.
An exciting, genre-melding journey into magical realms and the mending power of love.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4767-7428-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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