A challenging read outside of mainstream contemporary sci-fi, but readers with a fondness for the early classics will find...
Iyyam’s sci-fi novel, the first in a planned trilogy, has hints of Dune and Discworld as a destiny is fulfilled amid an interplanetary war between the peoples of Prul and Bekod.
Siglez Ipt falls to the ground on his home planet of Prul with no knowledge of where he’s been for the last decade. Sped on his way by a seemingly omniscient Playwright, who appears to be writing Siglez’s story like the Fates of Greek mythology, Siglez is greeted as a prophesied leader in Afadral. He’s given three tests to prove that he is fit to lead his people on their quest to obtain a seed from the sacred Johr tree on the neighboring planet of Bekod. After passing the tests with suspicious ease, he survives an assassination attempt by the aBekod military leader Intak Jav and then heads into a ritualistic set of battles overseen by Tirla Kto and Sra Ja, the Minders of the respective iPrulautu and aBekod armies. But it seems that the Johr tree might have a stake in the matter. The space-opera plot doesn’t feel too original, and the prose often recalls the flowery, high diction of early 20th-century sci-fi, à la E.R. Eddings or even C.S. Lewis. Meanwhile, the Mars-like landscape and fauna of Prul recall that of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom, and the 60-plus pages of appendices, maps and local linguistics echo Tolkien. However, the occasional flashes of humor and descents into the vernacular, as well as commentary on writing and storytelling, might leave readers wondering: Is this old-fashioned fantasy or a satirical take on it? Are the tongue-twisting names and phrases in darnathuPrul and SeloBekod (thankfully, translated) to be taken seriously, or are they—as parts of the story imply—parodies of sci-fi/fantasy excesses? Is this a confusing, convoluted book or a cleverly written spoof of one?
A challenging read outside of mainstream contemporary sci-fi, but readers with a fondness for the early classics will find themselves right at home.Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-1491713570
Page Count: 414
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2014
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 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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