An engaging and intricate fantasy that delivers plenty of political intrigue.
This debut novel weaves a tale of gods, ghouls, and forbidden magic.
Kaell, ward to Lord Vraymorg and bonded to the god Khir, is a warrior destined to spend his life killing ghouls. Aric Caelan is an Isles prince who is attacked by ghouls, who conscript him to poison Kaell. If Aric succeeds, his sister, Azenor, who is set to marry the king, will be spared. And then there are Heath Damadar and his alluring sister, Judith, who embark on a mission to find a bladesman for their own mysterious ends. They drug and question Pairas, one of Aric’s men. Each of these tales is stitched together against the backdrop of a fantasy world governed by a rumored false king and beholden to various gods. In this realm, cultists seek to bring about the resurrection of their true monarch, Roaran Caelan, now long dead. It is a dark kingdom, where ghouls—with their blond hair and beautiful features that do not match their bloodthirsty natures—are a threat to any defenseless village. Each chapter shifts its point of view to a different character, fleshing out the world in bits and pieces to create a tapestry that can only be seen once readers are able to step back and sit with the narrative for a time. Hartland’s prose is quite beautiful: “Butterflies danced in secret, sunlit groves where flame trees shed scarlet flowers.” But she does not shy away from vividly depicting the harsh realities of violence in this turbulent realm. While readers of high fantasy will likely delight in the rich machinations of this hefty volume, those less familiar with the genre may find themselves confused by the rapid back-and-forth perspectives as well as the lack of straightforward descriptions in the worldbuilding. Still, this detailed and lovingly crafted novel is an excellent series opener. The tale should especially appeal to fans of politics-infused fantasy narratives like George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series.
An engaging and intricate fantasy that delivers plenty of political intrigue.Pub Date: Nov. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-648-43720-8
Page Count: 629
Publisher: Dark Blade Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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