An exhilarating tale for fans of sword and sorcery, fantasy, and rich worldbuilding.
Ostracized for his uncontrollable, three-word outbursts, a boy comes of age in a realm filled with magic, evil, and warring gods in this debut novel.
A boy named Larin spends most of his time in a four-block area of a slum known as the Wormpile, a patch kept safe by his uncle, Akul, a formidable ex-warrior with a drug problem. Whenever Larin ventures out of this zone, he is harassed by gangs of bullies sanctioned by Oarl, who rules the Wormpile streets beyond Akul’s bailiwick. Larin loves to read and eventually learns that the mysterious words he speaks mean “The Lord Escapes His Prison.” Eventually, Akul employs Laniette, a wizardress, who suppresses Larin’s verbal eruptions. But during an attack at his uncle’s tavern/temple, the boy’s emotions cause him to speak the words in front of a priest and he is banished from the sanctuary. Later, Larin finds love in Onie, a girl he once thought unattainable, as Laniette teaches him how to wield the power his words bring and find his place in an upcoming struggle to save all of humanity. Meanwhile, war brews on many fronts of Larin’s city. The Lidathi threaten the northern border; to the south, the once-conquered Seridor ominously assemble. Inside the borders, the Morphasti use Nazi-like tactics to set people against one another. In this first installment of a fantasy duology, Rodgers creates an intricate world of fabulous creatures, diverse deities, colorful locales, and spectacular battles. His characters, whether human or Lidathi, are empathetic, realistic individuals. The author’s writing style is spot-on for this fantastic tale, never straying into the type of heroic language that can often turn into a parody of itself. Rather, the prose is crisp and image-filled: “The day Larin first exploded was one of flint skies and a fog that mercifully shrouded the Wormpile’s trash-filled alleys.” Additionally, relationships are well-developed; perhaps the most intriguing is the bond between Lidathi leader Kemharak and his captive Theralle, Lainette’s husband—which leads to an exciting cliffhanger conclusion.
An exhilarating tale for fans of sword and sorcery, fantasy, and rich worldbuilding.Pub Date: March 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9983616-1-1
Page Count: 264
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
