An imaginative, delightfully droll debut.
Murderous monks run amok underneath London in this contemporary supernatural tale.
Thirty-four-year-old Dr. Greta Helsing has run a very specialized clinic for five years after taking over for her late father, Wilfert Helsing: she treats the “differently alive” (aka vampires, ghouls, mummies, etc.) that roam in the shadows of London, keeping to themselves and avoiding the public eye. When her good friend Edmund Ruthven, a 400-year-old vampire, calls to tell her that Sir Francis Varney, a very famous vampire, showed up on his doorstep gravely wounded, she can’t get there fast enough. He has a cross-shaped stab wound that’s making him very ill, and he tells of an attack in his flat by a bunch of men (or are they?) dressed like monks, chanting strange phrases. The garlic they drenched his home in added insult to injury. It’s a strange story, but when Greta is attacked in her own car by one of them, who tries to slit her throat no less, seeing is believing. She escapes and gets the dagger after spraying her assailant with a heaping helping of pepper spray, hoping it will get them closer to finding out what they’re dealing with. Meanwhile, a vicious killer inevitably dubbed the “Rosary Ripper” is stabbing people to death and leaving cheap plastic rosaries in their mouths. Could it be the work of the rabid monks? Greta, Ruthven, Varney (who’s having an existential crisis), along with old friend of the family Fastitocalon (of still undetermined supernatural stock) and August Cranswell of the British Museum, are keen to find out and stop the madness, and the killing, for good. Shaw’s affection for her characters is obvious, and Greta is a sensitive, genuinely nice person who loves her job, is unerringly discreet, and cares deeply about her patients, even ones that try to kill her. She’s always innovating new methods of treatment, such as replacing the bones of a mummy’s foot so entropy won’t set in or treating depression in a rat fur (with tails)–draped ghoul chieftain. Readers will look forward to more of Greta’s adventures.
An imaginative, delightfully droll debut.Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-43460-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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