An emotionally nuanced tale for those who crave fresh fantasy storytelling.
In this fantasy debut, widespread change comes to a realm populated by humans, dragons, and ethereal caretakers.
Ladrin, a dragon from the frigid lands of Gren Amar, has finally returned from the southern continent. His mission, like all young dragons sent south, was to observe the hot, unruly strangeness in order to expand his horizons and understand his place in the world. But there’s one rule that all pilgrims must abide: no living thing can come back with them to Gren Amar. Now, almost home and recuperating in a snowy nest, Ladrin is stunned to find that a brilliant Phoenix bird has returned with him. Meanwhile, a couple of human explorers named Thervius and Belderon find themselves trapped by snow in a cave. With their people’s blessing, the two men had left their home after uniting as mates for life. Now, they must bring home another blessing, such as jewels—or perhaps something more precious. As the cave floods, they escape, and the heat from their “heartlight” intensifies, protecting them from the elements. But eventually, their affection for each other becomes dangerous, smothering them in a “dark, red sac.” Later, Ladrin mistakes this sac for a lumpy egg, which he decides to bring to the dragons of Gren Amar. Back among the human populace, Thervius’ older brother, Janku, suffers a terrible accident while tending the family farm. Rage infects his body, creating a demon made of soot that stalks the countryside. In her meditative debut, author Henson explores themes of love, cohesion, and forgiveness using charged fantasy imagery. The ambience of her realm borders on the divine; Gren Amar’s river, for example, has “bright red gingko leaves [that] floated atop the swirling streaks of crushed turquoise and lapis lazuli.” Action sequences are invested with emotional distress, as when Janku becomes a “morphing bomb of soot that pulverized generations of work and accumulation.” A background narrative tells of a world-defining symphony that draws on the power of rocks and stones, in a process helped by a sylphlike being named Welphrym. A subtle romance between a chieftain, Marcus, and a priestess, Sophia, is refreshing, but Henson’s matter-of-fact use of gay protagonists is doubly so.
An emotionally nuanced tale for those who crave fresh fantasy storytelling.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-615-43189-5
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Sharon Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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