Despite the subtitle, as much Faust as Frankenstein; for teens looking for social commentary in their fiction.
A philosophical fable, fourth in the series but able to stand alone, pits an ambitious scientist against his own unnatural creation.
Aspern Grayling was born in bucolic, pacifist Arcadia, but after over 100 years, all his loyalties lie with the technocratic militaristic empire of Megalopolis. This report, ostensibly a plan of conquest, metamorphoses from a dry encyclopedic assessment to a more personal memoir (or, perhaps, confession) following his triumph: the genetically-engineered Nietzschean übermensch Pavo Vale. Incorporating allusions to the contemporary political climate, the story delivers a polemic framed in binaries: technology/nature, individualism/communalism, rational/spiritual, toxic masculinity/eternal feminine, etc. The former are personified in the monstrous Pavo, who would be cartoonishly villainous if it weren’t for his graphically brutal rapes, murders, incestuous obsession, and wanton destruction; the latter, in the immensely (and interchangeably) beautiful, wise, compassionate, multiethnic heroines of Arcadia. Only Aspern bridges the divide: He is arrogant, condescending, viciously misogynistic, transparently (and unconvincingly) justifying of Pavo’s appalling crimes, yet sympathetic in his honest admiration of any intellectual achievement, his craving for respect and admiration, and his deep, unwilling love for the Arcadian professor Devindra Vale. Black-and-white illustrations of tarotlike cards in a pre-Raphaelite style hint that the apparent triumph of Megalopolis and its values may be only temporary.
Despite the subtitle, as much Faust as Frankenstein; for teens looking for social commentary in their fiction. (dramatis personae, family tree, table of transformations, appendices) (Fantasy. 15-adult)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-935259-31-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Exterminating Angel
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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