The gods are cruel and capricious, and Lee spares no detail through 336 pages of soporific, tormented, occasionally...
Manufactured mythology, from the author of White as Snow (2000), etc.
Queen Hetsa's daughter by the Sun King, Akreon, is born with no feet, so she tells the king that the child died, and surreptitiously consigns the infant to the death god. Miraculously, the child survives Thon's merciless initiation rites and eventually learns to move on crutches. Later, after Akreon dies, Udrombis the Sun Consort poisons Hetsa and orders the child, a royal heir after all, returned to the palace. There, young Calistra glimpses her sun-bright brother Klyton, and falls in love. He, astonished by her beauty, reciprocates and orders that she be taught to walk, upon specially made silver feet. Glardor, the new Sun King, tends to his farming and ignores Klyton and his older brothers Amdysos and Pherox. Later, during a brief war against a neighboring land, Pherox dies in bizarre fashion—struck in the face by a hurled apple. Klyton and Amdysos both nurse ambitions to win the Great Race, a sacred chariot race conducted inside a mountain. Amdysos tricks Klyton and emerges first; as Klyton curses him, a gigantic eagle flies down and snatches Amdysos away. Glardor, stung by a bee, dies. His successor, Nexor, disgraces himself and is rejected by the gods. Klyton becomes Sun King and takes Calistra to wife, to the joy of both. Then Amdysos, horribly crippled and without memory, returns—just as his demented wife gives birth to a demon with exactly the same deformities as Amdysos. So it goes.
The gods are cruel and capricious, and Lee spares no detail through 336 pages of soporific, tormented, occasionally unintelligible prose.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2003
ISBN: 1-58567-207-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003
A new series starts off with a bang.
A queen and her young daughter are forced to separate and go into hiding when a corrupt politician tries to take over the kingdom.
Queen Cressa of Weirandale is worried about her 8-year-old daughter, the “princella” Cerúlia. The people of Weirandale worship a water spirit, Nargis, who grants each queen a special gift called a Talent. Cressa herself is able to meddle with memories, for example, and her mother possessed supernatural strategic abilities that served her well in battle. Cerúlia, however, appears to have none, because surely her insistence that she can talk to animals is only her young imagination running wild. When Cerúlia’s many pets warn her about assassins creeping into the royal chambers, the girl is able to save herself and her mother. Cressa uses her Talent, which actually extends to forcing anyone to tell her the truth, to root out traitors among the aristocracy, led by the power-hungry Lord Matwyck. Fearing for her daughter’s life and her own, Cressa takes Cerúlia and flees. Thinking Cerúlia will be safer away from her mother, Cressa takes the girl to a kind peasant family and adjusts their memories so they believe Cerúlia is their adopted daughter. Kozloff’s debut is the first of four Nine Realms books, and Tor plans to publish them over just four months. Luckily, the series opener is a strong start, so readers will be grateful for the short wait before Book 2. Kozloff sets a solid stage with glimpses into other characters and nations while keeping the book together with a clear, propulsive plot.
A new series starts off with a bang.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-16854-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 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.
