Brimming with Pratchett’s trademark wit, a yarn with a serious point made with style and elegance.
Pratchett’s 40th Discworld novel brings in one—or, as it turns out, two—intriguing new characters and introduces a radical new concept: the railway.
Young genius engineer Dick Simnel invents a steam locomotive he names Iron Girder. Waste management tycoon Sir Harry King immediately grasps the lucrative possibilities and invests part of his fortune in the railway. Ankh-Morpork’s Lord Vetinari intends for the city to keep control of the new enterprise and appoints con man–turned–civil servant Moist von Lipwig to keep an eye on matters. The railway proves wildly popular with the public. Unfortunately, dwarf fundamentalists opposed to fraternization with trolls or humans begin making terrorist attacks, murdering railway workers and setting fire to clacks communications towers. The terrorists eventually overthrow the legitimate dwarf government in Uberwald while the dwarf Low King is more than 1,000 miles away. Only by means of the railway, declares Lord Vetinari, can Low King Rhys return to Uberwald in time to foil the plotters. But Uberwald, haunted by vampires and werewolves, may be approached only across high plains covered with stumbleweed (“like tumbleweed, but less athletic”). And, Moist protests, the railway isn’t finished. Somehow, Vetinari explains kindly, Moist better find a way to finish it if he wants his head to remain attached to his neck. Young Dick, meanwhile, entertains a most peculiar notion: that Iron Girder is female and sentient. And after witnessing the locomotive deal with a misguided dwarf’s attempted sabotage, Moist is inclined to agree with him. In recent years, Discworld humor has become implicit (check out the hilarious names of Uberworld towns, for example) rather than explicit, while continuing to explore serious themes with impeccable Discworld logic, and the trend continues here.
Brimming with Pratchett’s trademark wit, a yarn with a serious point made with style and elegance.Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-53826-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
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
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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