A sturdy entry in a fantasy series about unbreakable bonds.
The fourth book in Wilder’s (The Danger in Justice, 2018, etc.) paranormal romance series featuring immortal warriors and reincarnation.
Katerina not only dreams about her past lives but remembers them when she’s awake—or, at least, many of them. In her first life, many years ago, her name was Kepa, and she was the sole witness to a murder of Four, one of the most powerful so-called immortals, who can live for thousands of years. Another immortal, Two, gave Kepa the ability to recall her past lives in the hope that her memories would reveal the murderer, but it took centuries before she even got close to remembering the event. Each time she was reincarnated, she would eventually find Arsen, the immortal warrior who’s bound to her, but lately they’ve been unable to stay together. Now, she’s been called back into service, and she decides that if she’s going to be forced to spend her time translating old documents, she’s going to do it somewhere scenic—a beautiful Greek island. Within days of arriving there, however, Katerina begins to recall a past life that she’d forgotten, as well as parts of her own relationship with Arsen that had created their bond. Now that Katerina is in the house that Arsen had built for her, there may be a chance for them yet. Readers will find that there’s a lot to unpack over the course of this novella, and the author helps new readers catch up by offering a fair amount of backstory. Despite this, there will likely be parts of the tale that will be confusing to those who lack familiarity with the previous books. That said, readers who focus only on Katerina and Arsen’s relationship will have little problem following their story, which is a solid romance. Indeed, the second-chance-at-love plotline alone makes the book worth a read, mainly for the author’s clear, emotional prose (“Arsen was tangling his fingers in her hair and she was breathing in, holding the warmth close, locking the scent of his skin deep in her lungs”).
A sturdy entry in a fantasy series about unbreakable bonds.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 385
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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