‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 17, 2016
This earnestly delivered work about a dangerous quest lacks strong editing.
In this epic fantasy debut, three special teens set out to find magical artifacts and prevent war from ravaging their world.
Skystead is the capital of Balmora, the largest of nine islands on the world of Eerea. Peace now reigns, but long ago, during the Dawn of Umbra, the vile Mordeus led hordes of ruinous creatures across the land. If not for the courageous primes of the Magelentic Council and the Jadari warriors (as well as a key betrayal), the Dreadmore army would have destroyed Eerea. And yet, humanity “has always sought power above all other things.” The Magelentic Council fears that Balmora sits unprotected should war break out anew. In the annual Tournament of Champions, the primes hope to find a hero capable of retrieving the powerful Crescent Moon of Kydesis. The amulet, unfortunately, was last worn by Mordeus himself and has been lost with his remains. When the tournament reveals three capable teens—Rygar, Velentus, and Taliea—they are dispatched to the temple city of Asnora to find the Decipher Stone of Cophos, which should lead to Mordeus. Meanwhile, in distant Illyria, a boy named Kaiis suffers frequent apocalyptic dreams. As he and his mother travel to a seer in Windermere, his destiny in Balmora’s nightmarish future takes root. In this energetically plotted series opener, Walker balances a large cast in numerous locations (and many classic dungeon crawls) across Balmora. Among the courageous protagonists, Velentus is the potent standout, armed with both telepathy and flame-casting. Rygar frequently provides comic relief; when Velentus wants to sample the Darkroot plant, he quips: “Well, we know who will be the first to die.” Walker also keeps fantasy fans tuned in with a barrage of inventive characters (such as Ecrin the Gorchen), creatures (the batlike Raza), and villains (the merciless Vorkalth). But the author’s inattention to grammar and spelling proves distracting. At least once per page, a word is misspelled or misused, and lines like “As they passed ever suitable inn, they hadn’t stop to properly rest” take readers right out of the narrative.
This earnestly delivered work about a dangerous quest lacks strong editing.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-944156-40-4
Page Count: 438
Publisher: Andrews UK, LTD
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Elin Hilderbrand ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2015
Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.
Hilderbrand’s latest cautionary tale exposes the toxic—and hilarious—impact of gossip on even the most sophisticated of islands.
Eddie and Grace Pancik are known for their beautiful Nantucket home and grounds, financed with the profits from Eddie’s thriving real estate company (thriving before the crash of 2008, that is). Grace raises pedigreed hens and, with the help of hunky landscape architect Benton Coe, has achieved a lush paradise of fowl-friendly foliage. The Panciks’ teenage girls, Allegra and Hope, suffer invidious comparisons of their looks and sex appeal, although they're identical twins. The Panciks’ friends the Llewellyns (Madeline, a blocked novelist, and her airline-pilot husband, Trevor) invested $50,000, the lion’s share of Madeline’s last advance, in Eddie’s latest development. But Madeline, hard-pressed to come up with catalog copy, much less a new novel, is living in increasingly straightened circumstances, at least by Nantucket standards: she can only afford $2,000 per month on the apartment she rents in desperate hope that “a room of her own” will prime the creative pump. Construction on Eddie’s spec houses has stalled, thanks to the aforementioned crash. Grace, who has been nursing a crush on Benton for some time, gives in and a torrid affair ensues, which she ill-advisedly confides to Madeline after too many glasses of Screaming Eagle. With her agent and publisher dropping dire hints about clawing back her advance and Eddie “temporarily” unable to return the 50K, what’s a writer to do but to appropriate Grace’s adultery as fictional fodder? When Eddie is seen entering her apartment (to ask why she rented from a rival realtor), rumors spread about him and Madeline, and after the rival realtor sneaks a look at Madeline’s rough draft (which New York is hotly anticipating as “the Playboy Channel meets HGTV”), the island threatens to implode with prurient snark. No one is spared, not even Hilderbrand herself, “that other Nantucket novelist,” nor this magazine, “the notoriously cranky Kirkus.”
Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-33452-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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PERSPECTIVES
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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SEEN & HEARD
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APPRECIATIONS
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