Heroic fantasy stalks our anti-heroic age as if bent on providing a thesis for every cultural sociologist in the land. What keeps people reading? Part of the answer may be found in Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles. Thomas Covenant, divorced by his wife after the discovery of his leprosy, nurses a numbed obsession with bare physical survival and a helpless rage at the vicious persecution of the frightened local townspeople. An inexplicable accident transports him to another world, "the Land," where he finds himself and his useless wedding ring regarded as mighty powers in an epic struggle. Lovers of the genre will find some striking variations. Covenant comes into the Land not as a clear-browed savior but as an agent of rejection and violence, anesthetized by belief in the unreality of the "dream"-world where his leprosy is healed. The consequences of his first actions in the Land are closely compounded of good and evil, and it is long before he can accept "real" responsibility for both. The handling of the character often collapses into trivial whining, but as a framing image, Covenant is decidedly effective. As for the Land itself, Donaldson does not seem to have it in his bones as Tolkien did Middle-earth, but the various topographies and inhabitants are imagined with a certain solidity. Curiously, the evil powers are least convincing, dissipated in a haze of silly nomenclature ("Drool Rockworm," "Satansfist," the "ur-viles") and cliche-filled descriptions of yellow eyes and green flames. Only the "good" characters (notably a merry and infinitely forbearing Giant) achieve anything approaching life. Unfortunately the writing does not live up to the larger virtues: one may pass without warning from a strong and telling phrase to "empty inanition," people shouting in "livid" voices, Covenant refusing a meal because "the thought of eating made his raw nerves nauseous." Still, if this is a mess, it is a mess of more than occasional stature. Preachier than Tolkien, yet conversely conveying a more sophisticated sense of moral complexities, Donaldson's trilogy is a Hawed and erratic work, but not an inconsiderable one.
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1977
ISBN: 0006473296
Page Count: 1160
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1977
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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