An addictive adventure with a familiar framework.
In this YA medieval fantasy, a noble family enjoys peacetime pursuits until history comes knocking.
On the world of Pentavia, in the realm of Treland, the city of Arwin’s Gate is about to host the largest tournament in a decade. Lady Isolda of House Hornbolt fears that it may be a turning point in the lives of three of her children. Terric, almost 13 years old, is destined by custom to join the priesthood—despite his fondness for swordplay. Oriana, 16, is ready for marriage to a noble, possibly even Prince Rixin. Marcus, 18 and the oldest of Isolda and Lord Garrion’s children, will be competing in the tournament against the undefeated prince and others, which could cost him his life. As if Isolda isn’t preoccupied enough, she receives a note from Axion Tobias Crane, Terric’s tutor. She leaves Vulture Keep and secretly meets him at the Razortooth Tavern. Within a sinkhole in the floor, he reveals to her “a yellowed corpse dressed in golden armor.” This is the body of Arwin, the one true God. Does this misplaced holy artifact have anything to do with the rot that House Hornbolt has been suffering since the end of the Wizard’s War almost 20 years ago? In this epic fantasy, Hauge (Riddle of Regicide, 2014) and Smoak (The Truth in My Lies, 2018, etc.) excel at rotating through their cast, using third-person chunks to make several small dramas succeed. While Oriana fears that Prince Rixin won’t like her compared with Princess Navya, Terric plans to run away to the northern Huntlands before priesthood descends. Structurally, the narrative is reminiscent of A Game of Thrones, but with less cynicism and brutality. Delightful surprises lurk around most corners, including the thief Bastian (and his squirrel, Nut), who steals Oriana’s heart. In this first volume of a series, the authors whet fan curiosity for distant locales like Arwood Forest and the Isles of Invention. A savage cliffhanger brings everything into sharper focus for the sequel.
An addictive adventure with a familiar framework.Pub Date: April 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-985876-05-7
Page Count: 450
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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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