Resolute women energize a remarkable, ongoing coming-of-age story.
In Barnes’ sequel, a teenage girl in ancient times is caught in the midst of a vicious rivalry for a tribe’s leadership.
In 4000 BCE, the Plānos tribe in the Pontic-Caspian steppe (modern-day Ukraine and southern Russia) loses its leader when Awos dies. His son, Potis, a clan chief and potential new Plānos leader, faces opposition from both another clan chief and his own cousin, who wants to oust Potis from his current position. A harsh winter has already depleted the livestock, making hunger a frightening possibility. But when raiders steal and mercilessly slaughter the remaining livestock, Potis suspects someone among his rivals has a hand in it. Meanwhile, Potis’ wife, Sata. and their 15-year-old daughter, Naya, return from the latter’s spiritual journey. During that time, Naya bonded with a red filly; she’s surprised that the clan has captured horses from the filly’s band and then horrified to learn they’re meant to be sacrificed to a god. It all stems from the general lack of animals for sacrifice, which is, in turn, another aspect of the battle for Plānos leadership. Potis wants to but can’t immediately make a move against the raiders, leading to serious tension within the clan. Does Wailos, the son of a rival of Potis’, have a genuine interest in marrying Naya, or is something else brewing? And will Naya feel obligated to marry him? Awos’ widow, Awija, is determined to help Potis and Naya, and a decidedly unhappy Sata contemplates bidding the clan, and likely her family, goodbye. Things take a crucial turn when Naya’s impending three-day vigil for her transition into adulthood finally arrives.
Barnes painstakingly develops the story’s female characters. The lives of Awija and Sata, for example, are paralleled; as Awija exerts an influence on events that most people are unaware of and Sata seemingly believes that her only choice is leaving everything behind, they’re both often at odds with men. Naya endures the worst of it, and she shows admirable strength while withstanding ruthless torment—mental and physical. The men are less interesting, ranging from static characters to interchangeable villains. This even includes Potis, who struggles to keep his clan and his family together, and Aytal, who met Naya in the previous series installment but, in this novel, is separated from her. They each face engaging difficulties that the story never fleshes out, opting instead to blame Potis, repeatedly, for troubles that he and others suffer. Still, the author masterfully clarifies the tribe’s customs and offers instances of its language, making it easy for readers to lose themselves in a narrative set millennia ago. Also, the prose paints colorful visuals, as when noting the “green flecks glinting in the firelight” in someone’s eyes and a setting sun’s “streamers of yellow and orange to accent the darkening sky.” With the exception of one significant death’s relatively minor impact, the ending is satisfying and sets the stage for the final book in a prospective trilogy.
Resolute women energize a remarkable, ongoing coming-of-age story.Pub Date: June 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798992769005
Page Count: 364
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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