A satisfying wrap-up to a delightfully gothic contemporary urban fantasy series.
In the conclusion to Shaw’s Greta Helsing trilogy (Dreadful Company, 2018, etc.), Greta must puzzle out the cause of a strange illness running rampant throughout the mummy community.
Mummy specialist Dr. Greta Helsing is thrilled to be asked to temporarily take the reins at Oasis Natrun, Marseille’s private and exclusive mummy spa and resort, and jumps at the chance to escape rainy London for sunny France. Greta is dazzled by the beauty of the hillside resort, not to mention its state-of-the-art medical equipment and uber competent nursing staff (including a mummy who used to be an Egyptian priest). Greta barely settles in before one of her patients suffers a mysterious fainting spell that drains his energy. The episodes are spreading, and the only thing that might be able to help is an ancient and rare Egyptian artifact ensconced very securely in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Meanwhile, during a trip to Italy with Grisaille, his new boyfriend and a master thief, the fashionable vampire Edmund Ruthven, Greta’s old friend, experiences a vicious bout of sickness and is whisked off to Oasis Natrun for treatment tout de suite, and Greta’s boyfriend, vampire Sir Frances Varney, joins her at the resort for moral support. Then there are those slightly creepy angelic creatures/fashion models that seem to be up to no good on the earthly plane. Greta has a lot on her plate, but her calm, take-charge attitude and compassionate bedside manner are a balm for her patients, and passages detailing her clever treatment practices add weight to her strange profession. Shaw’s characters, both human and supernatural (ghouls, witches, screaming skulls, oh my!), are genuinely fascinating, and her prose is just as droll and witty as ever, but it’s Greta, with her big heart and determination to do the right thing, that makes this series sparkle. Readers will be happy to be pulled along in Greta’s bustling wake—which includes an enlightening trip to hell—for as long as it takes to solve the mummy conundrum and finally spend some quality alone time with Varney.
A satisfying wrap-up to a delightfully gothic contemporary urban fantasy series.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-43465-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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