A thoughtful fantasy with a well-developed protagonist.
This multigenerational novel tells a story of enslaved people who try to protect themselves and their legacy with “water magic.”
Briar (Wrath and Ruin, 2016) tells the story of the Whisperers, men and women who have the “Voice” to command water and water spirits, but they can’t use their power for harm. Ten-year-old Eder witnesses the enslavement of Whisperers by fearsome worshipers of the god Resk, who consider them “abominations.” He’s charged with rescuing the Whisperers’ holy relics. The story then picks up years later with the story of Betka, the Resk worshippers’ palace Whisperer and slave. She aspires to earn her freedom by selling rubies embedded in her golden shackle. While studying in the palace library, Betka overhears a conversation between an army officer and King Ethriken about an attack on Kysavar Castle and a sailing expedition. She decides to join the latter to help her sister Tosna, another Whisperer, who was sent to the castle years before. During the voyage, Betka and fellow Whisperer Asi, face unknown magic; later, they discover Kysavar is impossibly covered in water, “as if a huge wave had crashed against the cliff...and then forgotten how to fall to the earth.” Cruel Capt. Rorlen forces the Whisperers and crew to press forward into the doomed castle. The story weaves in past tales of Betka and Eder, her grandfather, finding their way in a hostile environment. Briar’s exploration of the teachings of Whisperers creates a rich, vibrant fictional world, featuring riveting characters struggling against their enslavement. In particular, the horror at the castle emphasizes how people can question their values and beliefs in the face of death. The story ends a little abruptly; hopefully, it will be the first of several tales set in this lush world. Betka is fully fleshed out as a character, with a complex desire for freedom and loyalty to ideas. Her grandfather, however, doesn’t feel as well-rounded. Also, the jump from Eder’s story to Betka’s is a bit jarring; more time could have been spent exploring his later years, his children, and how Betka and her sister became enslaved.
A thoughtful fantasy with a well-developed protagonist.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Uncommon Universes Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2018
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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