A page-turning, twisty, inventive addition to an addictive series that amply fulfills the promise of the previous book.
This second entry in the Millennium’s Rule fantasy series (Thief’s Magic, 2014) moves nimbly and authoritatively among magical worlds and ideas.
In long, alternating narrative sections, stories unfold of two people constrained and conflicted by difficult or harrowing circumstances. Although these intersect only rarely and obliquely, we come to trust that, singly or combined, they will assume critical importance at some juncture; Canavan does not disappoint. Artist Rielle Lazuli lives in a remote world so depleted in magic that attempting to use it is forbidden. Valhan, the godlike Angel of Storms, learns that Rielle actually creates new magic by exercising her creativity and offers her a place among similar artisans—but then inexplicably abandons her on a desert world. She’s rescued by the Travelers, interworld traders who reveal that the cruel and ruthless sorcerer who rules all the worlds, the Raen, has returned after a 20-year absence, during which many of the laws he imposed have been ignored. Raen and Angel are one and the same, the Travelers say—an assertion Rielle rejects. Meanwhile, Tyen Ironsmelter became an inventor and teacher at a school for magic, having fled his home world after refusing to surrender Vella, a woman magically turned into a book a millennium ago. When the Raen returns, Tyen’s new associates abandon the school and warn that Tyen must serve the Raen or be destroyed. Desperate, Tyen strikes a bargain: the Raen agrees to investigate how to restore Vella to human form; in exchange Tyen must spy on a rebel group seeking to overthrow the Raen. Though the characters possess no great personality or depth, the pace is relentless and culminates with a jaw-dropping trial of moral strength.
A page-turning, twisty, inventive addition to an addictive series that amply fulfills the promise of the previous book.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-20924-3
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.
In the first volume of a trilogy, a fresh cataclysm besets a physically unstable world whose ruling society oppresses its most magically powerful inhabitants.
The continent ironically known as the Stillness is riddled with fault lines and volcanoes and periodically suffers from Seasons, civilization-destroying tectonic catastrophes. It’s also occupied by a small population of orogenes, people with the ability to sense and manipulate thermal and kinetic energy. They can quiet earthquakes and quench volcanoes…but also touch them off. While they’re necessary, they’re also feared and frequently lynched. The “lucky” ones are recruited by the Fulcrum, where the brutal training hones their powers in the service of the Empire. The tragic trap of the orogene's life is told through three linked narratives (the link is obvious fairly quickly): Damaya, a fierce, ambitious girl new to the Fulcrum; Syenite, an angry young woman ordered to breed with her bitter and frighteningly powerful mentor and who stumbles across secrets her masters never intended her to know; and Essun, searching for the husband who murdered her young son and ran away with her daughter mere hours before a Season tore a fiery rift across the Stillness. Jemisin (The Shadowed Sun, 2012, etc.) is utterly unflinching; she tackles racial and social politics which have obvious echoes in our own world while chronicling the painfully intimate struggle between the desire to survive at all costs and the need to maintain one’s personal integrity. Beneath the story’s fantastic trappings are incredibly real people who undergo intense, sadly believable pain.
With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-22929-6
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
A love letter to imagination, adventure, the written word, and the power of many kinds of love.
An independent young girl finds a blue door in a field and glimpses another world, nudging her onto a path of discovery, destiny, empowerment, and love.
Set at the turn of the 20th century, Harrow's debut novel centers on January Scaller, who grows up under the watchful eye of the wealthy Cornelius Locke, who employs her father, Julian, to travel the globe in search of odd objects and valuable treasures to pad his collection, housed in a sprawling Vermont mansion. January appears to have a charmed childhood but is stifled by the high-society old boy’s club of Mr. Locke and his friends, who treat her as a curiosity—a mixed-race girl with a precocious streak, forced into elaborate outfits and docile behavior for the annual society gatherings. When she's 17, her father seemingly disappears, and January finds a book that will change her life forever. With her motley crew of allies—Samuel, the grocer’s son; Jane, the Kenyan woman sent by Julian to be January’s companion; and Bad, her faithful dog—January embarks on an adventure that will lead her to discover secrets about Mr. Locke, the world and its hidden doorways, and her own family. Harrow employs the image of the door (“Sometimes I feel there are doors lurking in the creases of every sentence, with periods for knobs and verbs for hinges”) as well as the metaphor (a “geometry of absence”) to great effect. Similes and vivid imagery adorn nearly every page like glittering garlands. While some stereotypes are present, such as the depiction of East African women as pantherlike, the book has a diverse cast of characters and a strong woman lead. This portal fantasy doesn’t shy away from racism, classism, and sexism, which helps it succeed as an interesting story.
A love letter to imagination, adventure, the written word, and the power of many kinds of love.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-42199-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Redhook/Orbit
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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