Square, sturdy, straight-down-the-middle fantasy entertainment, enjoyable for the Shannara faithful.
Brooks (Witch Wraith, 2013, etc.) returns with a stand-alone Shannara novel starring Paxon Leah.
The book is replete with sorcerers, druids, magical weapons and other familiar signifiers of the fantasy genre, but true wonder is in disappointingly short supply. The presence of mechanically powered airships and gunlike weapons distinguish the story somewhat from its obvious forebears, but at heart, Brooks’ story sits squarely—perhaps too squarely—in the tradition of Tolkien and his cohort. The narrative concerns the travails of one Paxon Leah, scion of a once-significant magical family, as he attempts to rescue his sister from an evil wizard bent on retrieving the Leahs’ magical sword. Paxon is aided in his efforts by the Druids, an order of magic users tasked with policing the use of arcane arts, who are locked in political struggle with the technology-favoring Federation; Arcannen, the sinister mage who kidnapped Paxon’s sister, plays both sides with the Leahs acting as his unwitting pawns. That’s about all there is to it: The bland characters are broadly drawn, afforded a basic characteristic or two (Paxon is noble and resolute, Arcannen is wicked and devious, etc.), the prose is risibly clunky, exposition is baldly delivered, often repeatedly, as if Brooks had forgotten he had already explained various plot points, and the depictions of magic and other fantastic elements of Paxon’s world are generic and feel secondhand. Brooks delivers some mild pleasures: The story does move briskly, and there are enjoyable bits of business involving battles with werewolves and scenes of supernatural combat, and the familiar stations of Paxon’s “hero’s journey” are comforting in their familiarity.
Square, sturdy, straight-down-the-middle fantasy entertainment, enjoyable for the Shannara faithful.Pub Date: March 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-54070-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
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
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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