Add a Dutch captain in flight after seducing an admiral’s daughter, a duplicitous British consul, and a rescue from a Heart...
Sending young Hal Courtney sailing the Golden Bough along the coast of East Africa, Smith (Desert God, 2014, etc.) enlists co-author Kristian to resume his swashbuckling 17th-century series featuring the Courtneys.
Angus Cochran, Earl of Cumbrae, known as the Buzzard, is a villain whose betrayal sent Hal’s father, Sir Francis, to the gallows; he himself escaped flame and cannon to wash up on Zanzibar's shores, albeit burned and missing an eye and arm. That back story is filled in as Cochran is enslaved by Maharajah Jahan, Omani Arab ruler of Zanzibar, a "cauldron of humanity where the blood of European, Bantu, and Arab was mingled" Jahan wants the Buzzard to kill Hal because Hal sailed in the cause of Christian Ethiopia against Muslim invaders. Jahan also hates Hal’s true love, Judith Nazet, a Joan of Arc–like Ethiopian general whose victories saved the Tabernacle and Holy Grail. The biblical legend is a minor element in a narrative mishmash of piracy, derring-do, and romance that becomes a hot mess of fights at sea, fights on land, murders, and arson, with heroes captured, enslaved, and sold on the auction block. Characters are black and white, not a nuance to be found, from Errol Flynn–like Hal to his wise and stoic right-hand man, Aboli, an Amadoda warrior, to a tangential antagonist named Pett, a psychopathic British East India Company clerk who appears only to up the gore factor. Rendered in a florid, verbose voice laced with flowery descriptions, the tale wanders through declarations of vengeance, hairsbreadth escapes, and pirate hideaways, leaving a trail of unrelenting violence—blindfolded fights to the death and execution by rhinoceros—all the way to Sir Francis’ treasure hidden at Elephant Lagoon.
Add a Dutch captain in flight after seducing an admiral’s daughter, a duplicitous British consul, and a rescue from a Heart of Darkness colonial gold mine, and there’s enough action to keep pages turning.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-00-753570-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
A war story that focuses on the psychological aftermath rather than the wartime experience itself.
The experiences, perspectives, and secrets of a French family during the Nazi occupation and after World War II.
DeWitt (Dogs, 2010, etc.) spins a complex web of memories as she tells the story of the Delasalle family. Early in the book we meet Geneviève, who has gone to Paris to audition for the National Conservatory. Her younger sisters, Françoise and Yvonne; her grandmother; her mother; and her stepfather, Henri, live in occupied Caen, Normandy; her brother, Simon, and her aunt Chouchotte also live in Paris. On D-Day, Caen is bombed, and some family members are killed. The book centers on how the characters who are left recall those times. The postwar sections focus on Geneviève as a grown woman, married to an American and returning to France every summer with her children, and about what became of the others. These sections move between the past and present as the characters remember. The chapters in which Françoise and Chouchotte revisit memories are compelling and successfully portray the indelible impact of the war on people who lived through it. A few friends of the family have their own chapters, and those, while interesting, seem somewhat tangential. Polly, Geneviève’s youngest daughter, lives the war through her mother’s stories and her other relatives’ silences, and her chapters reveal the war’s impact on the next generation. DeWitt successfully conveys the way memories vary from one person to the next, so that for example, Simon, Geneviève, and Chouchotte have different recollections of the moment they met on a Paris street and Simon’s wife blurted out the news of the deaths in Caen. The Jewish characters here are mostly admired by the French gentiles, and one Jewish man, a pediatrician in the Delasalle’s hometown, has young mothers fawning over him. Perhaps because widespread anti-Semitism features in much of the fiction set in World War II–era France (such as Irène Némirovsky's Suite Française), its absence, especially among the Delasalle family, is notable.
A war story that focuses on the psychological aftermath rather than the wartime experience itself.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-283472-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
A forced effort to leverage interest around the legendary Chelsea Hotel, this novel is a miss.
Perennial Broadway understudy Hazel Ripley and center-stage bombshell Maxine Mead formed a close bond as performers touring with the USO during World War ll. Now that they’ve been home for five years, can their friendship survive the McCarthy-era witch hunt for Communists in show business?
Davis (The Masterpiece, 2018, etc.) has built her brand crafting historical fiction set at New York landmarks like the Barbizon Hotel, the Dakota apartment building, and Grand Central Terminal. Now readers are taken behind the doors of the storied Chelsea Hotel, a creative oasis for artists and freethinkers, as Hazel and Maxine try to navigate the Broadway theater scene. While Hazel has never enjoyed success onstage, she discovers a talent for playwriting and directing. Her career is off to a promising start, especially since bestie Maxine has agreed to use her star power as a box office draw for Hazel’s show. Their drama unfolds offstage when both women are named on a list of Communist sympathizers and must testify about suspected anti-American activities. With a high-stakes storyline that should be tension-filled, the novel unfortunately features prose that is expository and flat. Maxine’s diary confessionals fail to give any insight into her inner life and seem only to serve as information downloads. Even revelations that should shock evoke a tepid response, probably because the buildup has been so noncompelling. Thankfully, Hazel’s relationships—with everyone from her mother to a private investigator working in tandem with the FBI—are more engaging and complex. Notably absent from the cast list, though, is the Chelsea Hotel itself. In Davis’ previous novels, the setting plays an integral role in the storyline. Here, though, the sparse descriptions of the site seem to be almost an afterthought. Hazel and Maxine could have been living at a Holiday Inn and it would have had no effect on the telling.
A forced effort to leverage interest around the legendary Chelsea Hotel, this novel is a miss.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4458-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
