A highly impressive debut that engages intellectually while rarely offering emotional involvement.
Fantasy intrigue, power politics, and revenge: Brooklyn resident Dickinson’s first novel.
The arrival of the Empire of Masks at Taranoke, 7-year-old Baru Cormorant’s home, signals a swift collapse of local autonomy, with the peaceful island’s economy subverted by financial deceit and little means of military resistance. The new imperial overlords offer significant advantages, including superior if doctrinaire education and medicine, but insist upon rigid sexual convention. Taranoke’s easygoing culture, with its acceptance of homosexuality and multiple parentage, crumbles—a brutal fact Baru grasps only when one of her two fathers is murdered by imperial troops. A highly intelligent child, Baru conceals her deep hatred. She meets Cairdine Farrier, who represents himself as a merchant and encourages her higher education in imperial schools. Baru formulates a secret plan to rise through the ranks of the imperial civil service and eventually reach the seat of power in the distant capital, Falcrest, since only there, she reasons, will she find a way to free her people. Farrier, she learns, is one of a handful of shadowy figures who form the real power behind the emperor. Having distinguished herself at school, she receives the powerful appointment of Imperial Accountant to the cold northern land of Aurdwynn. According to local judgment, Aurdwynn’s quarrelsome, competitive, rebellious duchies cannot be ruled, even by the empire. Baru discovers that her two predecessors both died in mysterious circumstances and trusts neither of her fellow imperial appointees, Governor Cattlson or Jurispotence Xate Yawa. Somehow, amid treachery, insurrection, and mistrust, Baru must concoct a scheme to further her greater ambitions. Against this persuasive backdrop, Dickinson’s dense, chewy, deftly orchestrated narrative cleverly exploits fiat money and debt as tools of statecraft, while offering little in the way of real plot surprises and, ultimately, failing to expose the personalities behind the characters’ literal and figurative masks.
A highly impressive debut that engages intellectually while rarely offering emotional involvement.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8072-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
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