The start of a fantasy epic, crafted by sure hands and starring bighearted characters.
In this YA debut, twins capable of magic hide from a merciless queen until their fate stands revealed.
Twins Cayden and Avery Tiernan live as shepherds in a village called Sanctuary-by-the-Sea. One day, while Cayden enjoys his hobby of carving flutes near a gigantic oak tree, he senses that somebody is spying on him from the bushes. His watchers are Ziona Aspenwood and Sharisha Fernfell, members of the magical Primordial race—whom Queen Alcina Cursetag, in thrall to the Great Goddess, would like to exterminate. Ziona and Sharisha are Seekers, observing the twins because each displays a pulsing blue aura and may well be those prophesied to retake Castle Cathair from the queen. Cayden himself realizes that his flutes are magical in nature because each one he plays draws a different animal species to him, creating a loyal bond in the process. Avery, meanwhile, is an empath (able to sense the feelings of others). When the Queen’s Guard arrives to forcibly recruit young men for her military, Cayden and his best friend, Ryder, spy on their camp. Scouts catch the two, however, and in a fit of panic, Ryder murders one of them. From this moment on, the twins step out of the shadows and begin a campaign to challenge Alcina and the dark forces aiding her. In this rip-roaring series opener, Faw displays a gift for hitting readers with the unexpected. The prose doesn’t wallow in violence, yet certain moments possess an unmatched visceral quality. Ryder’s victim, for example, has “bright red blood” that sprays out “from the gash, pumped...by a heart that did not know it was doomed.” Other familiar fantasy elements, like prophetic scrolls, animal spirits (the thunderbird Mik’maq), and death-dealing wraiths (the Charun), are finely calibrated to serve Faw’s superior pacing. Most impressive is the buildup of Cayden as the rightful ruler of Cathair. People can feel his greatness, and Ziona eventually says, “I am yours; my soul is yours to do with as you please. I do not fear death when you are near.”
The start of a fantasy epic, crafted by sure hands and starring bighearted characters.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9953438-0-1
Page Count: 300
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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