A terrific and involving alternate version of a fantasy world.
In Neill’s revisitation of his Elk Riders fantasy series, a young woman seeks a fabled treasure to save her village.
This offbeat fantasy novel acts as a standalone alternate take on the concepts and characters in the author’s five previous Elk Riders novels published in 2016, beginning with In the Darkness Visibleand concluding with The Magus. As the story opens, Gabriela Carlyle has brought her brother, Daven, to a ceremony presided over by a healer named Arkmaven, hoping that the meager offering she's brought might result in a miracle cure for the compulsive behavioral quirks that have led village bullies to refer to her sibling as “half-witted.” Her prayer isn’t granted, though, and she’s dealing with her disappointment the following day when chaos erupts in the village. Strangers called the Servior have come to Gabriela’s island village of Harkness seeking to purchase the ominous black tower at the center of local religious life. Gabriela, Daven, and an unlikely band of misfits (along with a noble elk character named Adamantus) embark on the sailing vessel Elawnin search of a hidden treasure that will allow the village to retain ownership of the tower. The group encounters pirates, armed combat, and other personal challenges along the way. Neill jumps into this tale with clear confidence that he’s not just rebottling old wine; fans of the Elk Riders series are sure to find this book fascinatingly different, even as it retains some similarities. To highlight its “alternate history” aspect, the author even alters character names (Gabriella from the previous books is Gabriela here, and Dameon is Daven). Neill’s prose is always evocative (“the movement of carts, horses, and people,” reads a passage about a submerged town, “had been replaced by silt and sand swirling through forests of seaweed and tall marsh grasses”) and he presents vivid descriptions at every turn; at one point, for instance, Gabriela notes a character’s hands as being “slick and hot with his blood.” Also, the emotional heart of the book—Gabriela’s evolving and deepening affection for her troubled brother—glows with sincerity.
A terrific and involving alternate version of a fantasy world.Pub Date: April 7, 2024
ISBN: 9798884763340
Page Count: 303
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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