An epic fantasy that builds an intriguing setting but never quite comes into focus.
In a debut novel, Dyer introduces an unusual fantasy world set in the different levels of a giant forest and plagued by social strife.
Canopy is a great city that spreads across the top level of a giant forest. Divided into 13 kingdoms, each devoted to a different god or goddess whose soul is constantly reincarnated into a human body, the world of Canopy holds itself carefully separate from the realms on the forest’s lower levels. The city basks in the abundance that comes with plentiful sunlight and shores up its power and wealth with the labor of slaves. Unar, an ambitious and fiercely determined teenager, escapes her parents’ plan to sell her into slavery and becomes a Gardener serving in the Garden of the goddess Audblayin. When the goddess dies, Unar finds herself passed over for promotion to a new level of magical power and service. Adrift from what she assumes is her destiny, she sets out to find the new reincarnation of her goddess and stumbles on to uncomfortable realizations about Canopy and her own past. The world of Unar’s story is complicated and sometimes difficult to visualize, afflicted with profuse but often haphazard detail. Careful descriptions of clothes and people and the various fantastical quirks of the forest feel like notes for worldbuilding that the story does not quite have the strength and momentum to knit together. Race seems to play an important role in the social hierarchy of Canopy, but the story hesitates to make a strong, or even clear, statement. It is unclear whether the Canopians hold themselves above the pale-skinned residents of the lower levels because of their race or simply because they have the privilege of cultivating tans.
An epic fantasy that builds an intriguing setting but never quite comes into focus.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8592-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
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