Sheer joy, with quirky characters, spooky monsters, sprightly banter, and swashbuckling that puts Sindbad to shame.
A middle-aged mother in medieval Oman is convinced to return to her former career—piracy—in the first of an epic fantasy series.
A decade ago, nakhudha (shipmaster) Amina al-Sirafi abandoned the criminal seafaring life on the Indian Ocean after a terrible incident involving Raksh, the demonic husband she unwittingly married, and Asif, a member of her crew. But her quiet life with her half-human daughter, Marjana, in a remote, dilapidated mountain home is disrupted by a visit from Asif’s wealthy mother, who persuades, guilt-trips, and eventually threatens Amina into returning to her ship and reuniting her crew. She offers Amina an incredible sum to rescue Asif’s teenage daughter, Dunya, apparently kidnapped by Falco Palamenestra, a Frankish (i.e., Italian) ex-Crusader with an unhealthy interest in magical artifacts. Thus begins a wild adventure in pursuit of Dunya, Falco, and a mysterious and incredibly dangerous magical treasure known as the Moon of Saba. Fans of Chakraborty’s Daevabad books will appreciate an incident late in the novel that confirms that this series is set in the same universe, albeit several centuries earlier; however, that knowledge is not necessary to enjoy this story. Over the past few years, several social media threads have lamented the lack of middle-aged mothers as fantasy heroes, arguing that they would make for great protagonists: They're fierce and seasoned but forced to confront the conflicting needs of their familial, personal, professional, and social responsibilities, circumstances that many men—particularly not your young, inexperienced hero or your grizzled loner veteran—would not face. Chakraborty has clearly leaped to answer the call, and to very good effect. Amina exists in a society where women are expected to stay home and tend to family. She’s tried that life: She loves Marjana and would do anything to keep her safe. But once she goes forth again, Amina remembers how much she loves the sea and risking everything in search of adventure and profit. Balancing those two loves has the potential to tear her apart and will no doubt serve as a major point of tension in upcoming installments.
Sheer joy, with quirky characters, spooky monsters, sprightly banter, and swashbuckling that puts Sindbad to shame.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780062963505
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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