Weird and haunting and excellent.
The much-anticipated second novel from the author of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (2004).
The narrator of this novel answers to the name “Piranesi” even though he suspects that it's not his name. This name was chosen for him by the Other, the only living person Piranesi has encountered during his extensive explorations of the House. Readers who recognize Piranesi as the name of an Italian artist known for his etchings of Roman ruins and imaginary prisons might recognize this as a cruel joke that the Other enjoys at the expense of the novel’s protagonist. It is that, but the name is also a helpful clue for readers trying to situate themselves in the world Clarke has created. The character known as Piranesi lives within a Classical structure of endless, inescapable halls occasionally inundated by the sea. These halls are inhabited by statues that seem to be allegories—a woman carrying a beehive; a dog-fox teaching two squirrels and two satyrs; two children laughing, one of them carrying a flute—but the meaning of these images is opaque. Piranesi is happy to let the statues simply be. With her second novel, Clarke invokes tropes that have fueled a century of surrealist and fantasy fiction as well as movies, television series, and even video games. At the foundation of this story is an idea at least as old as Chaucer: Our world was once filled with magic, but the magic has drained away. Clarke imagines where all that magic goes when it leaves our world and what it would be like to be trapped in that place. Piranesi is a naif, and there’s much that readers understand before he does. But readers who accompany him as he learns to understand himself will see magic returning to our world.
Weird and haunting and excellent.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63557-563-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A truly epic tome that satisfyingly stokes the brilliant blaze kindled by its predecessors.
The war between Spell Walkers and Blood Casters reaches its thrilling conclusion as election day looms.
Tensions between twins-turned-enemies Brighton and Emil—the so-called Infinity Kings—are at an all-time high, and each is following his own ideas of what it means to be a hero. Whereas Brighton wants his powers (and influencer fame) to grow, Emil wants to bind his powers forever and restart his life. Meanwhile, Maribelle seeks a way to revive her late boyfriend while she’s simultaneously developing confusing feelings for Halo Knight Tala. Caught in his own love triangle and vying for Emil’s favor, Ness plots revenge on his political mastermind father. In each of the major plot strands, plans quickly go up in smoke with surprises and deception at every turn—and an astonishingly high body count. Will their alternate New York ever really see peace? This trilogy closer lightly recaps the previous entries while propelling the complex, action-packed plot at a phoenix’s soaring pace. Emotions run high throughout, including sizzling sexual tension that arises even in the most unexpected moments. Although the book is heavy on explanation, Silvera expertly juggles the four alternating first-person narrators while seamlessly tying up all the loose ends. The moral ambiguity of the mostly brown-skinned and/or queer cast makes for fascinating character development, and the magical parallels to contemporary political situations are chilling.
A truly epic tome that satisfyingly stokes the brilliant blaze kindled by its predecessors. (the world of Gleamcraft, dramatis personae) (Fantasy. 12-adult)Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9780062882363
Page Count: 752
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Astonishing, puzzling, and hallucinatory as only Murakami can be, and one of his most satisfying tales.
Another beguilingly enigmatic tale from Murakami, complete with jazz, coffee, Borgesian twists, the Beatles, and other trademark motifs.
In what is in many ways a bookend to 1Q84, Murakami blends science fiction, gothic novel, noir mystery, horror (think Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s film Pulse), and coming-of-age story. His protagonist and narrator, as the novel opens, is a 17-year-old boy aswoon in love with a 16-year-old girl. “At that time neither you nor I had names,” he sighs, and when the girl slips away, he knows too little about her to find her. Before that, though, she transports him to a walled city that’s not on any map: “Not everyone can enter. You need special qualifications to do that.” Both of them have those qualifications, the young man filling the urgently needed role of a reader of dusty and long-backlogged dreams. The girl moves on, the boy becomes a middle-aged man, and back in the real world where “silence and nothingness, as always, were my constant companions,” he abandons Tokyo for a little mountain town to become its librarian, curating real books, not dreams. There he encounters two otherworldly characters, one a neurodivergent teen, Yellow Submarine Boy, who memorizes every book he reads, whatever the subject. The other—well, as he explains, “without hesitation, I’d say that although it’s rather dated and convenient, you could call me a ghost.” Both characters point in their own ways to a fleeting world where all that matters, in the end, is love—and where love is always just out of reach. It’s an elegant fable that deftly weaves ordinary reality—“something you have to choose by yourself, out of several possible alternatives”—with a shadow world that is at once eerie and beautiful.
Astonishing, puzzling, and hallucinatory as only Murakami can be, and one of his most satisfying tales.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780593801970
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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