Seven-tenths filler, three-tenths story.
Why does King (Dreamcatcher, 2001, etc.) write such gross stuff (“I have the heart of a small boy . . . and I keep it in a jar on my desk”)?
His latest is less gross-out than police procedural. A strange “man” in a black coat and hat pulls up to a nearly deserted gas station in rural western Pennsylvania in a weird Buick 8 Roadmaster and, while his tank is being filled, disappears behind the station. Troopers come and move the Buick to Shed B out behind their precinct house. Why? Because the car is only a poor simulation of a car: the battery’s not hooked up, the dashboard is stage-dressing, and most of the car seems made of unknown materials. Then the vehicle starts to make local earthquakes and gives off a purple light that outlines the nails in the shed walls. All this began 20 years ago, and the troopers have watched the car go through otherworldly shifts: it gives birth to a big batlike thing; a sofa-sized fish; unfamiliar green beetles; a lilylike plant; and it has sucked one trooper into its trunk, teleporting him God knows where. Then a girl-battering tattooed kid gets sucked in. Lead investigator is Trooper Curtis Wilcox, who dissects the strange bat and finds egglike one-eyed baby bats inside. This year, Curtis Wilcox has been killed on the highway after hailing a tractor-trailer, and now his teenaged son Ned wants the lowdown on the station’s cover-up about the Buick 8. The novel gives the history of the car—or would that it did. Instead of following it’s fairly gripping premise, King stuffs his tale with endless police procedure and some of the most truly dull characters this side of a 1930s Soviet proletariat play. The writing’s not bottom drawer, but this is truly a miscalculation after the emotional wonders of The Green Mile, Hearts in Atlantis and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.
Seven-tenths filler, three-tenths story.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2002
ISBN: 0-7432-1137-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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