A dark fantasy gem with an often sparkling delivery.
From Reid (Strings, 2014, etc.), an urban fantasy in which a young woman is drawn by prophecy through hidden worlds of magic.
Twenty-three-year-old Katie Lin is part of the Kin, a group of men and women with magical powers. Other groups include the Ever-Dying (humans who don’t have powers) and five other magic-using Peoples of the Earth, some of whom live on different, parallel Earths, collectively called the Mythos. Katie wanted nothing to do with magic, so she ran away from her family to live in New Hampshire, and her life is now settled. But then Bran—the Crow King, grandson of the Raven King, and heir to the throne of Darkness—shows up, expecting her help. According to the prophetess Cassandra, whose soul Bran keeps in a clamshell in his pocket, Katie can guide him to Notte, father of all vampires, who, in turn, can save Bran from being killed by his own grandfather. Very much against her will, and sinking further out of her depth with each faltering step, Katie is dragged into Bran’s unfathomable quest. The Mythos is a complicated place and quite enough to discombobulate the unwary reader. Moreover, Katie’s involvement does seem a bit random at first. But while many fantasy novels are content merely to rehash other works, Reid’s work is singularly original, deeply evocative, and at times quite poignant, as when Katie has an encounter with an old Fey, who, at the end of his life, is turning to stone. And although the plot may seem at first to extemporize, the journey is really the point of the story, which gains pace and focus as it moves toward its destination. The Mythos alone would be enough cause to recommend this book, but, for new-adult readers in particular, Katie’s first-person narration will make it even more appealing. Reid has a distinct, irreverent, and frothy style and imbues Katie with mordant wit and a gutful of millennial girl-power. Together, they bring quest-fantasy insouciantly into a modern era.
Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9852600-9-5
Page Count: 246
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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