A moderately entertaining but wrongheaded Civil War thriller.
Loyalties are tested in Woods’ (Never Trust a Hero, 2011, etc.) novel, set in Civil War–era Washington, D.C.
In 1863, the nation’s capital is a hotbed of both political and romantic intrigue. Gerard Chantier, a wealthy Southerner who left New Orleans for the North, is living in the city with his daughter, Thérèse, and his old, loyal friend James, an ex-slave whom he freed as soon as his father died. But unbeknownst to both of them, Gerard hasn’t given up his Southern ties: he’s a Confederate spy, gathering information from cabinet members and engaging in suspicious business dealings that could make him an even wealthier man after the war is over. Meanwhile, Thérèse and her rebellious, inscrutable older friend, Rachel, become acquainted with young, disgraced Union Maj. Russell Johns, whose hotheaded letters to his father, a long-serving congressman, have moved him from the battlefield to behind a desk. Thérèse has long been engaged to a wealthy English lord of her father’s choosing, but something about Russell appeals to her. However, Rachel has her eye on him, too, and not for the reasons one might expect. It’s unsurprising that intrigue of all kinds abounds and that all the various plotlines wind up being connected in one way or another. Woods’ third novel has some promising elements: Thérèse’s budding romance with Russell is modestly enjoyable, and Rachel is a spry, sarcastic character. But it’s crippled by the plot’s ultimate failure to resolve in a sensible or satisfying way. Multiple characters behave irrationally in order to move the narrative forward, and the story fails to truly grasp the period; although the plot is superficially connected to the Civil War, the setting never feels truly lived-in. Crucially, the depiction of slavery seems badly skewed: James, for example, is a woefully outdated character, and of Gerard, the narration states, “Like Lincoln…[he] knew that slavery was doomed to extinction by the combined forces of the industrial revolution, changing economics and the tide of history.” This is patently untrue, and suggesting otherwise does a disservice to Lincoln, who dedicated his life to the monumental task of abolishing it.
A moderately entertaining but wrongheaded Civil War thriller.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2010
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 383
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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