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THE ABSINTHE EARL

Name: THE ABSINTHE EARL
Author: Sharon Lynn Fisher
ISBN: 978-1-9826-8441-9

by Sharon Lynn Fisher ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2019

Imaginative, original, and worth a try.

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Fairies, absinthe, and ancient secrets provide an adventurous backdrop for romance in this historical-fantasy romance.

In 1882, there are rumors in Ireland of fairies returning to make their claim on the country’s lands. After years of banishment, they’ve found a way to bridge the worlds between human and fairy, and the key might lie in absinthe. Englishwoman Ada Quicksilver is in Ireland to study this connection of absinthe and fairies. At a pub that specializes in the bright green drink, Ada encounters Edward Donoghue, Earl of Meath, a most peculiar man whose sleepwalking is only helped by consumption of absinthe. He takes an immediate interest in Ada’s research, offering to escort her to a famed fairy portal. As Edward joins Ada in her investigations, their connection grows deeper; their attraction is more than what it seems. The environment is lush and imaginative, with everyone appearing to hide their own seductive, dark secrets. It’s a world that comes alive with mysterious, foggy moors, dangerous peat bogs, and gorgeous green hills. Ada is an admirably independent heroine, taking her research quite seriously despite the handsome distraction of Edward. Though Edward plays a bigger role in the history of fairies and humans, he’s also the more confusing of the two main characters, with a backstory that is, at times, difficult to follow. Dedicated romance readers might feel slightly robbed given the slow burn between the hero and heroine and the greater attention paid to establishing historic Ireland and its relationship to the fairy world. However, the Irish mythology and folklore are where Fisher’s (Before She Wakes, 2016, etc.) writing shines. Despite its flaws, this is an ambitious series opener that mostly delivers.

Imaginative, original, and worth a try.

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-9826-8441-9

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Blackstone

Review Posted Online: July 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019

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IN THE DISTANCE

by Hernan Diaz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 3, 2017

Not for the faint of heart, perhaps, but an ambitious and thoroughly realized work of revisionist historical fiction.

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Violent, often surrealistic Wild West yarn, Cormac McCarthy by way of Gabriel García Márquez.

Håkan Söderström is a force of nature, a wild giant whose name, in the frontier America in which he has landed, is rendered as the Hawk. On the docks back in Gothenburg he was separated from his brother, Linus, and he has sworn to find him in a land so big he can scarcely comprehend it. The Hawk lands in California and ventures eastward only to find himself in all kinds of odd company—crooks, con men, prophets, and the rare honest man—and a tide of history that keeps pushing him back to the west. Along the way, his exploits, literary scholar Diaz (Hispanic Institute/Columbia Univ.; Borges, Between History and Eternity, 2012) writes, are so numerous that he has become a legend in a frontier full of them; for one thing, says an awe-struck traveler, “He was offered his own territory by the Union, like a state, with his own laws and all. Just to keep him away.” The Hawk protests that most of what has been said about him is untrue—but not all of it. As Diaz, who delights in playful language, lists, and stream-of-consciousness prose, reconstructs his adventures, he evokes the multicultural nature of westward expansion, in which immigrants did the bulk of the hard labor and suffered the gravest dangers. One fine set piece is a version of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which religious fanatics dressed as Indians attack a pioneer party—save that in Diaz’s version, Håkan tears his way across the enemy force with a righteous fury befitting an avenging angel. “He knew he had killed and maimed several men,” Diaz writes, memorably, “but what remained most vividly in his mind was the feeling of sorrow and senselessness that came with each act: those worth defending were already dead, and each of his killings made his own struggle for self-preservation less justifiable.”

Not for the faint of heart, perhaps, but an ambitious and thoroughly realized work of revisionist historical fiction.

Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-56689-488-3

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Coffee House

Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION

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A BLIGHT OF BLACKWINGS

by Kevin Hearne ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 4, 2020

A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.

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Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.

In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.

A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.