A memorable voice and compelling (and graphically violent) melding of fact and fiction.
A Mongolian rebel leader enlists real and unseen forces to fight for his ancestral homeland in Augenstein’s historical novel.
This exhaustively researched, bloody, and compelling work of historical fiction, set in late 19th- and early 20th-century Asia and parts of Russia, is narrated in the distinctive voice of Ja Lama, the real-life militant leader and Buddhist monk who fomented years of rebellion against Chinese rule over Mongolia. The author presents readers with a cruel, charismatic figure who intimidates and manipulates followers and opponents alike with the single-minded conviction that his leadership is preordained; with his carefully cultivated mystique, he seems to possess supernatural mental powers (his paranormal aspect is given unsettling credibility, despite an occasional sly wink from Ja Lama suggesting otherwise). Even as an 8-year-old, traveling with his parents out of Russia to their Mongolian homeland, Ja Lama is aware of his destiny as the reincarnation of the legendary 18th century anti-Manchu rebel leader, Amursanaa: “I was to be a great leader, to bring our peoples back to the respect and greatness we once had, when the haughty fell before our arrows, and our cavalry slashed across the whole known world.” On that grueling wagon trip from the banks of the Volga River, Ja Lama experiences his first hallucinatory vision of Agharti, the golden, subterranean kingdom of legend, a vision at odds with his arrival in an impoverished city in Inner Mongolia, but a place he will strive to reach all his life. Set against the upheaval of WWI and the Russian Revolution and supported by historical facts, Ja Lama’s reimagined life is a gripping saga that spans his abuse as a monk in training, his burgeoning mental gifts, an act of extreme violence that shaped him, military failures and successes, stints in Russia as a political prisoner, a years-long hermit’s retreat, torture both borne and inflicted, a final betrayal, and the chilling nemesis who haunts his life (be warned: The book contains numerous graphic descriptions of brutality and bloodshed, based on history and historical rumor).
A memorable voice and compelling (and graphically violent) melding of fact and fiction.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781950627646
Page Count: -
Publisher: Pandamoon Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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