This fun mystery is perfect for supernatural and whodunits fans.
A widow and divorcée team up to buy a Victorian mansion atop a scenic sea cliff; little do they know their guests will include ghosts and murderers.
A lighthearted mystery, from Marlowe, a pseudonym for Gloria Kruszka (Return to Love, 2016, etc.), that slowly simmers its plot and characters in a natural, unhurried manner. The story follows Eleanor Lela Menard and Maggie Foster as they investigate the house and its environs, decide to buy it, discuss and implement the various renovations, come up with the name the “Inn at Raven’s Crest,” and research the house’s somewhat disturbing history of tragedy and fleeing owners. Marlowe is a master of detail, explaining everything from the dishes they cook to the finer points of restoration. The first sign of something amiss occurs when Maggie thinks she sees someone looking out of a fourth-floor window. Such incidents escalate to rearranged boxes, the feel of hands in the shower, and other increasingly spectral shenanigans, culminating in seeing the various spirits that inhabit Raven’s Crest. After the women discover they can communicate with the ghosts using a digital voice recorder (turning up the volume to decipher their nearly inaudible voices), they begin playing Cupid between long-dead lovers and peacemaker for all who haunt their home. Perhaps most unique about this book, aside from the sociable ghosts, is that the ghosts are not the main story. That, it turns out, is the tale of a flesh-and-blood killer picking off the living guests during a storm that has cut the house off from the rest of the world—but that killer may be thwarted by otherworldly forces. Naturally, the guests are a motley assemblage of suspicious characters. But Marlowe breathes life into this well-worn scenario, not just with the use of spirit helpers, but by making even the most minor characters real and empathetic.
This fun mystery is perfect for supernatural and whodunits fans.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5375-9700-3
Page Count: 296
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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