A big, fun fantasy epic.
Price’s debut fantasy novel follows a young man who is the latest in a line of Earth-defending heroes.
Avery Cole, a University of Chicago student about to propose to his girlfriend, is looking forward to a night of watching the Cubs and drinking beer when a sword falls from the sky, pierces him through the chest, and zaps him into another world. The sword, it turns out, is Excalibur, the magical weapon of King Arthur. It’s presence in Chicago as part of a museum exhibition has brought all sorts of unlikely characters to the Windy City: Sir Gawain of the Round Table; a dwarf named Nicholas; an ancient madman named Solomon; and Solomon’s sidekick pig, Eustathios. Many wish to claim the sword, but Excalibur has chosen Avery. He awakens in the midst of a white ocean and swims toward an island where he is told, “Give up. Your pain, your past, your life is over. Join us for the Griffin has claimed you.” The Griffin is a figure—sometimes heroic, sometimes villainous—called upon to protect the Earth from outside interference. Assisted by a group of ragtag heroes from across history and myth, Avery lands in the middle of an ancient battle waged between the Tribunal, who are bound to defend our world as we know it, and Empros, Inc., an interdimensional corporation poised for a hostile takeover. Price’s prose moves the reader along at a pleasant trot: “With each step the former Knight of the Round Table took towards the museum a green glow began to hover around him like fog creeping in from Lake Michigan.” The book is suffused with an endearing humor, which makes the characters easy to root for and the mythos easy to stomach. While the dialogue is often rather wooden, Price adeptly handles the novel’s parallel storylines and keeps the reader with him for the whole of the book’s 700-plus pages. The mix of fantasy, sci-fi, and satirical elements makes for a massive, immersive, and entertaining world that should please genre fans and general readers alike.
A big, fun fantasy epic.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5483-3317-1
Page Count: 754
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
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