A hilarious tale that has fun with fantasy tropes while also living up to their grandeur.
In this fantasy debut, a man with everything going wrong in his everyday life finds himself transported to a magical realm on the brink of cataclysm.
Math whiz and former derivatives broker Bartholomew Waxman of Vancouver, British Columbia, is jobless. He’s hit bottom after living the high life and cheating on his now-ex-wife, Barb. Desperate to pay the rent on his firetrap apartment, Bart decides to interview for a job at fast-food restaurant Burger Buddha. Manager Tony Threebears hires him, but after the interview, Bart suffers a strange out-of-body experience. Meanwhile, in the realm of Drageverden, two magical schools prepare for war. The benign Zhin and the malevolent Han have displaced a race of dragons called the Uktena. Algarth Willowbrow, the last living ZhinFantha (wizard-warrior) of the Sitting Six, dwells in the spell-fortified fortress of Phandomer’s Rock. One day, he’s attacked by evil wizard Grailborn, who’s broken a crystal branch from the enchanted Forest of Chakshsist for the purpose. Algarth, however, is a worthy foe who can balance positive and negative magics into a singular force. As their fight begins, Bart journeys into a place called the Between, where he must choose between the void—ending his life—or a destiny revolving around the Key of Life, which can bring peace to Drageverden. In this smashingly good debut, Lindley treads as closely as possible to a parody of the fantasy genre while also retaining an epic feel. Humor abounds, as when Bart “delivered himself like a death-row inmate to the front counter” of Burger Buddha. Later, he has an exceptionally hard time making it to the battlefield; in the Between, he matches wits with the Guardian of the Gate, whose rules result in Bart’s experiencing numerous violent “deaths”—delaying his arrival in Drageverden. Lindley intriguingly draws on Native American culture with antlered serpents called the Uktena; also, Tony knows from reservation life that sometimes people just need a second chance. The annihilation of the village of Driish, meanwhile, will prove to readers that anything can happen in this chaotic, inventive opening to a series.
A hilarious tale that has fun with fantasy tropes while also living up to their grandeur.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-979396-91-2
Page Count: 374
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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