A vivid first installment of a saga that will make readers look forward to the next.
An Appalachian woman and her son struggle to protect their mountain home in Collins’ (The Hunter of Hertha, 2015, etc.) historical-fantasy series starter.
In 1894, Delta Wade lives on Shadow Mountain with her young son, Lafette. Arn Marlon, Delta’s missing common-law husband, is a Watcher: a person who can wield the mountain’s magic and protect its people from harm. Delta hopes that Arn, long rumored dead, will return to raise his son as the next Watcher and protect their home from the Kingsleys, a rich family that’s bringing in industrialization and all the changes that come with it. The Kingsley family patriarch, King Kingsley, once tried to kill Arn and now harasses Delta in order to get harvesting rights to the magical Tyme trees covering Shadow Mountain. Kingsley’s son, the kind and handsome Henry, is desperately in love with Delta and tries to protect her from his father, while Kate Huston, Delta’s former mentor, seeks to take ownership of the mountain, claiming that only her stronger magic can keep it safe. Dueling economic and magical powers lead to a cataclysmic event that destroys multiple characters’ lives. Years later, an isolated Delta and a grown Lafette get a slim opportunity to revive what’s been lost. The fictional world of Shadow Mountain is complex and layered, with multiple characters all pursuing different, if sometimes-overlapping, goals. The result is a riotous, complex tale that still feels somber and elegiac as old ways conflict with new changes. Fittingly enough for a battle over a place, Collins’ descriptions of the setting are particularly vivid; a stand of poplar trees, for example, are “so tall they seemed like strings dropping from the sky.” The book’s first part brims with narrative tension as the conflicting interests come to a head, but the second part feels slacker, with less clearly defined conflicts, greater reliance on magical events and mystical sightings, and an ending that borders on a deus ex machina. But Collins’ well-defined, likable characters and colorful atmosphere are enjoyable throughout even when the plotting gets less coherent.
A vivid first installment of a saga that will make readers look forward to the next.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-937356-46-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: BearCat Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
