Vlad’s relentless wryness amuses steadily and gives this fantasy the lift it needs.
Newcomers will not be hard pressed to find their footing in this new installment of the popular Vlad Taltos saga (first hardcover in the series: Dragon, 1998) as Brust paddles in place orienting them and waits for his first big hook to arrive. Invisible Assassin and wisecracking hood Vlad, when not running something illegal for himself, works for House Jhereg, one of the 17 Great Houses of the Empire of Dragaera, a land ruled largely by semi-immortal “elfs.” In the forest between Appertown and Ridge, Vlad awakes in a paranoid state and instant telepathic contact with his companion and familiar, Loiosh, a very small dragonlike jhereg, and Loiosh’s mate, Rocza, the wild jhereg often on Vlad’s other shoulder. Vlad’s jheregs’ smart chatter echoes that of Fritz Leiber’s Gray Mauser, while sometime criminal Vlad’s lowbrow tough-talk recalls that of Tony Soprano (without the obscenities). Lady Teldra, the High Priestess of Lord Morrolan, has arrived with urgent need of Vlad’s services. She’s an Issola, a nonhuman creature so graceful, elegant, and well mannered that Vlad feels plain and clumsy by contrast. Lady Teldra leads Vlad to Castle Black, the floating home of ten-foot-tall Lord Morrolan, whose friends (also close to Vlad) have been kidnapped. Then the Issola teleports our hero to the Halls of Verra, the capricious Demon Goddess, whose skills and abilities surpass any human’s. To rescue his friends, Vlad believes he has to destroy Verra, but instead the Goddess lays out a plan he must follow to threaten the Jenoine, who hold the prisoners. All turns on a gambit made by Sethra, the Dark Lady of Dzur Mountain. And on Lady Teldra, who is not what she seems.
Vlad’s relentless wryness amuses steadily and gives this fantasy the lift it needs.Pub Date: July 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-85927-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.
A novelist tries to adapt to her ever changing reality as her world slowly disappears.
Renowned Japanese author Ogawa (Revenge, 2013, etc.) opens her latest novel with what at first sounds like a sinister fairy tale told by a nameless mother to a nameless daughter: “Long ago, before you were born, there were many more things here…transparent things, fragrant things…fluttery ones, bright ones….It’s a shame that the people who live here haven’t been able to hold such marvelous things in their hearts and minds, but that’s just the way it is on this island.” But rather than a twisted bedtime story, this depiction captures the realities of life on the narrator's unnamed island. The small population awakens some mornings with all knowledge of objects as mundane as stamps, valuable as emeralds, omnipresent as birds, or delightful as roses missing from their minds. They then proceed to discard all physical traces of the idea that has disappeared—often burning the lifeless ones and releasing the natural ones to the elements. The authoritarian Memory Police oversee this process of loss and elimination. Viewing “anything that fails to vanish when they say it should [as] inconceivable,” they drop into homes for inspections, seizing objects and rounding up anyone who refuses—or is simply unable—to follow the rules. Although, at the outset, the plot feels quite Orwellian, Ogawa employs a quiet, poetic prose to capture the diverse (and often unexpected) emotions of the people left behind rather than of those tormented and imprisoned by brutal authorities. Small acts of rebellion—as modest as a birthday party—do not come out of a commitment to a greater cause but instead originate from her characters’ kinship with one another. Technical details about the disappearances remain intentionally vague. The author instead stays close to her protagonist’s emotions and the disorientation she and her neighbors struggle with each day. Passages from the narrator’s developing novel also offer fascinating glimpses into the way the changing world affects her unconscious mind.
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-87060-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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