Constantine leaves us in a dark place, with her capstone volume next.
The feminist fantasy fabulist offers the second in her new Wraeththu trilogy.
British author Constantine finished her first Wraeththu trilogy, then decided to write a second to fit in between volumes two and three of the first and serve as a kind of prequel backgrounder to it. Thus there appeared 2003’s The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure, where mankind’s trimming and replacement by the telepathic and hermaphroditic Wraeththu are spelled out clearly. This installment takes us behind the scenes of the first trilogy and adds epic scope, showing how certain primary events in that series came about, as well as adding a deeper SF cast (about species genitalia, for example, and most interestingly) to the more high-flown Constantine lyricism of the earlier works. Here, mankind has fully departed, though once many humans had their DNA altered to produce parazha. Politically, some in the city of Immanion turned against this practice and wished to produce their own kind hermaphroditically. So the histories explore in part the death and rebirth of Pellaz, ruler of the Wraeththu, and make clear the conflict between the parazha, who are more female than male, and the hara, the androgynous Wraeththu. In the last metaphysical gender-bender, the origins of the Wraeththu were set forth, as were the rise of Pellaz and the birth of Lileem, with the mage/puppeteer Thiede pulling the strings of destiny. Now, Pellaz is drawn from his soulmate Calanthe to the love of Galdra and, though not a woman, becomes pregnant by him. But then Cal seems to have gone mad anyway and killed Orien while the story builds to the foreseen conflict between Ponclast and Pellaz.
Constantine leaves us in a dark place, with her capstone volume next.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-765-30347-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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A terrifying new storytelling experience that affirms, even in our darkest moments, that love conquers all.
A female big-rig driver crisscrosses America searching for signs of the wife everyone else thinks is dead.
This spooky third novel by Welcome to Night Vale creator Fink (It Devours!, 2017, etc.) is similarly based on an original podcast and offers a more threatening but equally personal take on the horror genre. Switching from the podcast’s intimate first-person narration, delivered with powerful emotion by actress Jasika Nicole, allows Fink to stretch out into the more remote corners of his mythos while delivering the same scary beats. The main character is Keisha Taylor, whose wife, Alice, disappeared while working for the mysterious Bay and Creek trucking company: “No cause of death. No body. No certainty. There was a disappearance, and after a long and increasingly hopeless search, the presumption of death.” Now Keisha has taken a job with the company as a long-haul driver, which thrusts her firmly into the eerie mythology at work here. Keisha is a fascinating character partially because one of her defining characteristics is chronic anxiety, and it’s a potent imperfection for a character who battles literal monsters on a regular basis. Along the way, Fink unveils the strange universe that swallowed Alice whole, revealing an underground war between two secret societies, time-bending oracles, and other Lovecraft-ian horrors. He also gives Keisha a charismatic ally in Sylvia Parker, a teen on the run who becomes her “anxiety bro,” and a bloodcurdling enemy in the macabre, twisted police officer who stalks her across the span of the country. But the book also tempers its terrors with everyday humanity, portraying the mundane joys of love, the rich fabric of the American countryside, and surreal “Why did the chicken cross the road?” jokes that are a hallmark of the podcast. By the time Keisha learns Alice's fate, readers will realize that this marvelous character is more than the sum of her faceless anxiety or her very real fears.
A terrifying new storytelling experience that affirms, even in our darkest moments, that love conquers all.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-284413-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Arden has shaped a world that neatly straddles the seen and the unseen, where readers will hear echoes of stories from...
Arden’s supple, sumptuous first novel transports the reader to a version of medieval Russia where history and myth coexist.
In a village in the northern woods where her father is the overlord, Vasya, a girl who has inherited her royal grandmother’s understanding of magic and the spirits that inhabit the everyday world, is born to a mother who dies in childhood. Raised by a kind father, an anxious and spiteful stepmother, a wise nurse, and four older siblings, the feisty and near-feral girl—“too tall, skinny as a weasel, feet and face like a frog”—learns to talk with horses and befriends the household and forest spirits that live in and around the village. These, say the handsome young priest who has been exiled to serve their household, are demons and deserve to be exorcised. The battle between Vasya and driven Konstantin, who spends his free time painting icons, fuels the plot, as does the presence of two of the old gods, who represent death and fear. Arden has obviously immersed herself in Russian history and culture, but as a consummate storyteller, she never lets the details of place and time get in the way of a compelling and neatly structured narrative. Her main story, which has the unmistakable shape of an original fairy tale, is grounded in the realities of daily life in the time period, where the top of a large stove serves as a bed for the elderly and the ill and the dining hall of the Grand Prince of Moscow reeks of “mead and dogs, dust and humanity.” Even minor characters are given their own sets of longings and fears and impact the trajectory of the story.
Arden has shaped a world that neatly straddles the seen and the unseen, where readers will hear echoes of stories from childhood while recognizing the imagination that has transformed old material into something fresh.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-88593-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
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