Packed with more details about the gods, their attributes and influences than most readers would probably prefer, but this...
Micklem’s follow-up to Firethorn (2004), the second volume in a projected trilogy, continues the adventures of a magically gifted young woman bound to handsome warrior Sire Galan.
Disobeying his express command, redheaded, independent-minded Firethorn takes ship with the army in order to follow Galan. During the voyage she’s struck by lightning; she survives this touch of the god Wildfire, though with shredded memories and garbled speech. Her companions regard her mangled utterances as oracular, and they are…but not always. Reunited with Galan (he's not too upset that she showed up), Firethorn shortly finds herself in the middle of a battle she doesn’t understand, separated from her lover’s side. She’s captured by soon-to-be-king Corvus, but then he’s forced to fight a civil war against Queenmother Caelum, and although Corvus manages to hold off Caelum’s hated Wolf warriors, he’s forced to flee across the mountains. Thanks to her true dreams, Firethorn guides the king safely into Lambanein—the place names sound Greek but the social structure resembles medieval Japan’s—and tumbles into a whole new set of adventures and experiences.
Packed with more details about the gods, their attributes and influences than most readers would probably prefer, but this tough, capable, intriguingly flawed heroine and her huge, dense, absorbing saga show no signs of running out of steam.Pub Date: July 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7432-6524-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A new edition of the by now classic collection of affiliated stories which has already established its deserved longevity.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1963
ISBN: 055338256X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1963
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