by Tamara Veitch Rene DeFazio ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 9, 2018
A stirring first installment in a sprawling fantasy epic, ending on a pronounced To Be Continued note.
In this debut novel, a war between the immortal forces of good and evil stretches over millenniums.
Veitch and DeFazio concentrate their fantasy, the first in a trilogy, on the Atitalans, a select group of supernatural beings sent to Earth to guide humanity through its evolution toward the next “Great Year.” This is an epoch ushered in roughly every 26,000 years by a shift in the planet’s orbit. The Atitalans, known as Emissaries, are “the way-showers, laying clues for those who would reawaken as the Great Year ascended once again.” These beings, who originated in the ancient, idyllic civilization of Atitala, evolved through countless reincarnations over the ensuing centuries. The focus in these pages is on a small core group of Emissaries, in particular Marcus, Theron, and Helghul. The three, fast friends at first, eventually become inveterate enemies. Helghul turns to evil and begins pursuing Marcus and Theron through time, from a catastrophe that engulfs Atitala to the present day, when the enormous cycle of ages is once again drawing humanity down through the Silver and Bronze Ages to the dark Iron Age. As the evocative story extends to the present, the authors skillfully widen the narrative to include a young man named Quinn (described by one of his friends as “practically a monk”), the latest incarnation of the Emissary Marcus. Quinn is astonished when random chance reunites him with his soul mate, Theron. This first installment, though passionately and engagingly written, leaves the story in mid-momentum and therefore isn’t as point-by-point dramatic as the series as a whole presumably will be. Rather, the most powerful element of this volume is its depiction of the complexities faced by an Emissary, moving from life to life with incomplete memories of previous incarnations, only able to recognize one another’s distinctive auras at close range. “The Emissary knew,” the authors write, “that when he died, he would be reborn into another shell, a new body, another lifetime.”
A stirring first installment in a sprawling fantasy epic, ending on a pronounced To Be Continued note.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947637-72-6
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Waterside Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Tamara Veitch and Rene DeFazio
by Leigh Bardugo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2019
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
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New York Times Bestseller
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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by Leigh Bardugo ; illustrated by Dani Pendergast
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by Kevin Hearne ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 4, 2020
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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by Kevin Hearne
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