Unpolished, unsophisticated, unsatisfying—and unlikely to deter Canavan’s fans.
In this prequel to the popular Black Magician trilogy (The High Lord, 2003, etc.), two young women on opposite sides of a war discover their life’s work.
Tessia has just begun her apprenticeship with a master magician when her country, Kyralia, is invaded by renegade magicians from neighboring Sachaka. Meanwhile, Stara, a half-Sachakan brought up in liberal Elyne, is shocked by the extremely limited role that women play in her father’s society. As Tessia discovers hitherto unknown methods of healing with magic, magicians in the Kyralian army seek new ways to defeat the Sachakans, eventually utilizing tactics as ethically questionable as those of their invaders. Meanwhile, Stara looks for a way to escape her restrictive life and rescue those who suffer worse fates. While the story of young women seeking independence and careers in a man’s world remains an appealing fantasy trope, especially for those who haven’t encountered it before, this is a less-than-stellar example of the genre. Canavan is of the tell-not-show school, and the social messages she’s embedded in the plot are less than subtly expressed. (Slavery, homophobia, misogyny and excessive ambition are Bad.) She attempts to underscore her points with several brutal incidents, but she undercuts her arguments instead by flinching at their implications and letting the worst parts occur discreetly offstage. This tendency is particularly noticeable toward the end, as the book rushes toward an entirely too abrupt conclusion.
Unpolished, unsophisticated, unsatisfying—and unlikely to deter Canavan’s fans.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-316-03788-4
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2009
An almost-but-not-quite-great slavery novel.
The celebrated author of Between the World and Me (2015) and We Were Eight Years in Power (2017) merges magic, adventure, and antebellum intrigue in his first novel.
In pre–Civil War Virginia, people who are white, whatever their degree of refinement, are considered “the Quality” while those who are black, whatever their degree of dignity, are regarded as “the Tasked.” Whether such euphemisms for slavery actually existed in the 19th century, they are evocatively deployed in this account of the Underground Railroad and one of its conductors: Hiram Walker, one of the Tasked who’s barely out of his teens when he’s recruited to help guide escapees from bondage in the South to freedom in the North. “Conduction” has more than one meaning for Hiram. It's also the name for a mysterious force that transports certain gifted individuals from one place to another by way of a blue light that lifts and carries them along or across bodies of water. Hiram knows he has this gift after it saves him from drowning in a carriage mishap that kills his master’s oafish son (who’s Hiram’s biological brother). Whatever the source of this power, it galvanizes Hiram to leave behind not only his chains, but also the two Tasked people he loves most: Thena, a truculent older woman who practically raised him as a surrogate mother, and Sophia, a vivacious young friend from childhood whose attempt to accompany Hiram on his escape is thwarted practically at the start when they’re caught and jailed by slave catchers. Hiram directly confronts the most pernicious abuses of slavery before he is once again conducted away from danger and into sanctuary with the Underground, whose members convey him to the freer, if funkier environs of Philadelphia, where he continues to test his power and prepare to return to Virginia to emancipate the women he left behind—and to confront the mysteries of his past. Coates’ imaginative spin on the Underground Railroad’s history is as audacious as Colson Whitehead’s, if less intensely realized. Coates’ narrative flourishes and magic-powered protagonist are reminiscent of his work on Marvel’s Black Panther superhero comic book, but even his most melodramatic effects are deepened by historical facts and contemporary urgency.
An almost-but-not-quite-great slavery novel.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-59059-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A somewhat fragmentary nocturnal shadows Jim Nightshade and his friend Will Halloway, born just before and just after midnight on the 31st of October, as they walk the thin line between real and imaginary worlds. A carnival (evil) comes to town with its calliope, merry-go-round and mirror maze, and in its distortion, the funeral march is played backwards, their teacher's nephew seems to assume the identity of the carnival's Mr. Cooger. The Illustrated Man (an earlier Bradbury title) doubles as Mr. Dark. comes for the boys and Jim almost does; and there are other spectres in this freakshow of the mind, The Witch, The Dwarf, etc., before faith casts out all these fears which the carnival has exploited... The allusions (the October country, the autumn people, etc.) as well as the concerns of previous books will be familiar to Bradbury's readers as once again this conjurer limns a haunted landscape in an allegory of good and evil. Definitely for all admirers.
Pub Date: June 15, 1962
ISBN: 0380977273
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962
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