Overwhelming but nonetheless enjoyable.
Duff’s fantasy debut, the first in a planned series, introduces the Weir, a millennia-old race of stewards of the Earth who conceal the magical powers some possess while living alongside humans.
Ian Black is an illusionist with a secret: The flashy tricks that have made him famous aren’t tricks at all. He’s a Weir with abilities like “shyfting” (teleportation), drawing his power from the magnetic field of the planet. He lives in unwilling isolation with his psychic Channels, twins Mara and Tara; Milo, his tutor and caretaker; and his manager, Patrick, the only human who knows some of his illusions are real. While Ian wants to be part of the human world, he’s kept from doing so by the Syndrion, a council that rules one race of Weirs, the Pur, who fight the evil Duach. When Sars (firstborn males with magical powers) from opposite sides meet, they react like matter and antimatter, a painful reaction known as the Curse. Ian defies Syndrion authority by saving humans in danger; their plights come to him in visions. One night, while saving college student Rayne Bevan, he’s unexpectedly hit by the Curse and discovers there’s much the Syndrion hasn’t told him about himself and the world. Rayne, for her part, is fascinated by the reclusive illusionist, first as a curious journalist and then as a woman. She’s unexpectedly drawn into his world when she sets off on a search for the father she never knew. Duff’s worldbuilding is fairly fluid; much of Ian’s background and the wider realm of the Weirs are revealed naturally in dialogue rather than in long, explanatory narrative. Her neologisms can be defined from context: For instance, when Ian shyfts for the first time, the reader understands he’s moved magically from place to place without being told. The details and new characters keep piling up, however, with genetically altered wolves, Duach assassins and true love all playing parts. The ambitious plot occasionally muddles the narrative; Duff deserves applause for having so many ideas, but a few might have been held back for later volumes.
Overwhelming but nonetheless enjoyable.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-0990562818
Page Count: 458
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2014
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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