A triumphant tale that will certainly appeal to lovers of dense, intricate fantasies with strong characters and fully...
In this sequel, a lord tries to resurrect a ghoul changeling in a war-ravaged world.
A great battle has ended in a kingdom indebted to an array of gods—and where ghouls attack unprotected villages—with an Isles victory. But ghoul changeling Kaell is dead; Lord Vraymorg is wounded; and the new king, Gendrick Caelan, has forged an alliance with a most unlikely friend: Archanin, the ghoul god. Ice Lord Heath Damadar, continually playing multiple sides of a complicated political game, must bring Prince Aric Caelan, the military commander of the Isles, to Myranthe, Damadar’s sister. She intends to raise the legendary death riders once again. Lord Vraymorg, having been revealed to warriors in the heat of battle as Val Arques, “the king’s man,” who has lived for hundreds of years, attempts to resurrect his charge Kaell with ancient blood magic. Unbeknown to him, his attempt works, bringing Kaell back in the dying body of Princess Azenor. When Lord Vraymorg and Aric are abducted by Damadar at Myranthe’s request, Kaell flees in his unfamiliar body. He is captured by Varee slavers and introduced to the serious and solemn warrior Dannon. Having defeated Dannon in a duel, Kaell, who now calls himself Kate, is made to renounce the war god Khir and swear allegiance to the god of the Varee, at least until he can determine whether or not Lord Vraymorg still lives. In Hartland’s (The 19th Bladesman, 2018) tale of intrigue, the stories of several well-developed characters, all with their own motivations, fears, and destinies, come together to tell the larger, complex saga of this violent, ruthless, war-torn world. (The book features a useful map of this realm at the front and a list of dramatis personae at the back that clarifies characters’ roles.) As in the series’ previous installment, this novel weaves interpersonal battles, political conflict, and fast-paced action into a tale chock full of fantasy adventures sure to please fans of the genre. Though the first novel was very well written, this second volume proves that Hartland is improving as she presses forward, with more convincing characterization and a story that reads smoothly and swiftly.
A triumphant tale that will certainly appeal to lovers of dense, intricate fantasies with strong characters and fully realized worlds.Pub Date: July 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-648-43723-9
Page Count: 609
Publisher: Dark Blade Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This large, stately, and intensely powerful new novel by the author of Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show is constructed around a cattle drive—an epic journey from dry, hard-drinking south Texas, where a band of retired Texas Rangers has been living idly, to the last outpost and the last days of the old, unsettled West in rough Montana. The time is the 1880s. The characters are larger than life and shimmer: Captain Woodrow Call, who leads the drive, is the American type of an unrelentingly righteous man whose values are puritanical and pioneering and whose orders, which his men inevitably follow, lead, toward the end, to their deaths; talkative Gus McCrae, Call's best friend, learned, lenient, almost magically skilled in a crisis, who is one of those who dies; Newt, the unacknowledged 17-year-old son of Captain Call's one period of self-indulgence and the inheritor of what will become a new and kinder West; and whores, drivers, misplaced sheriffs and scattered settlers, all of whom are drawn sharply, engagingly, movingly. As the rag-tag band drives the cattle 3,000 miles northward, only Call fails to learn that his quest to conquer more new territories in the West is futile—it's a quest that perishes as men are killed by natural menaces that soon will be tamed and by half-starved renegades who soon will die at the hands of those less heroic than themselves. McMurtry shows that it is a quest misplaced in history, in a landscape that is bare of buffalo but still mythic; and it is only one of McMurtry's major accomplishments that he does it without forfeiting a grain of the characters' sympathetic power or of the book's considerable suspense. This is a masterly novel. It will appeal to all lovers of fiction of the first order.
Pub Date: June 1, 1985
ISBN: 068487122X
Page Count: 872
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1985
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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