Formulaic, but Douglass brings many original touches to the telling, effectively using vivid imagery to flesh out her exotic...
Stand-alone fantasy-romance in a quasi-Egyptian setting.
Australian author Douglass (the Wayfarer Redemption series) tells the story of Tirzah, a young woman sold into slavery along with her father. Master glassworkers from a northern island, the two are sent to the southern kingdom of Ashdod to help build Threshold, a huge glass-covered pyramid. The Magi in charge of the project are skeptical of Tirzah’s ability to do the fine work required; Boaz, the master Mage, contemptuously destroys the beautiful glass sculpture she makes to show her skill, though he still sends her to work on Threshold. There, she learns from other glassmaking slaves that her skill comes from an awareness of the Soulenai, elemental spirits that inhabit glass and other natural substances. She also learn that the Magi forbid worship of any but the One, the harsh deity to whom Threshold is meant to be a doorway. When Boaz takes her as his concubine, the other slaves urge her to spy on the Magi, to aid the slaves in rebellion against their masters. Surprisingly, Boaz is not interested in sexual favors; instead, he intends to teach Tirzah to read, so that she can translate a book written in a northern language similar to her own. The book, she learns, is one from which Boaz’s mother once read him stories: in particular, one about the song of the frogs. From this point, the Mage begins to reveal his human side, and Tirzah begins to love him. But Threshold continues to grow, and its evil becomes obvious to all except the Magi. When catastrophe finally strikes, Tirzah and Boaz lead a group of slaves into exile, from which they hope to return to combat the evil.
Formulaic, but Douglass brings many original touches to the telling, effectively using vivid imagery to flesh out her exotic setting: a strong romantic plot in an unusual fantasy setting.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-87687-4
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
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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