An often captivating continuation of a fantasy saga.
The fantastical land of Esthopia remains plagued by the power-hungry and malicious Ortaks in this second installment of Benónýsson’s (Invasion of the Ortaks: The Knight, 2014) series.
The story opens with the drowning death of Queen Jofrid of Serpenia in a savage storm. As the Esthopians fret over the spread of the brutal Ortaks, they also face another, more ghoulish threat: creatures from the underworld, first encountered by Queen Jofrid’s lieutenant and his men. The frightened armies, noblemen, and kings of Eniktronia, Montania, and Serpenia face off against the Ortaks and King Armus in a spectacular battle at Broad Valley. But their heroism is offset by their lack of experience, and the Ortaks’ strategic attacks lay waste to them. Meanwhile, King Ethan and Princess Hilda of Alfheim—the land of the elves—and their aides transport themselves to the land of men to inform them of their new supernatural enemies: bull-riding Demons, ferocious wolflike creatures, and the Necromancers who summon them. A ragtag band of soldiers who escaped death at Broad Valley, led by an archer named Axel, find protection together while Queen Maria of Montania and her daughters flee to Storm Castle. Another part-elven hero, Tania, saves Queen Egny of Otanga. The chaos of the setting is reflected in the novel’s tendency to switch jarringly from one plotline to the next and from grand panoramas of Esthopia to individual portraits of its inhabitants as they struggle to stay alive—such as Sir William at Crown Castle, whose valiant attempt to deflect the Ortaks’ siege ends in carnage. However, it also delivers acute descriptions of politics, as an eccentric array of characters from disparate, even hostile, backgrounds find themselves adrift together in a war-torn world. It also tantalizingly refuses to hint at the final outcome regarding the plight of Esthopia and its people.
An often captivating continuation of a fantasy saga.Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-9-93-592621-0
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
