A swords-and-sandals action-adventure no worse or better than the first five in Smith’s Egyptian series.
Smith (Desert God, 2014, etc.) continues the saga of Lord Taita, loyal consigliere to Pharaoh Tamose.
Sadly, as Taita drives the last of the invading Hyksos from Egypt, Tamose dies. That’s troublesome for Taita because Tamose’s eldest son and heir is a cowardly, hedonistic pervert who calls himself Utteric Turo the Great. Utteric fears Taita. Utteric is also wary of his own brother, Rameses, next in line for the throne. Utteric betrays them both, but after imprisonment, derring-do, and escape, Taita and Rameses sail to Greece’s Bay of Githion, where they’re assured support from King Hurotas. Hurotas was once Tamose’s Capt. Zaras, an Egyptian officer, later persona non grata because he eloped with Tamose’s sister, Princess Tehuti, after being assigned to escort her to marry Minos of Crete. Tehuti and Hurotas’ beautiful daughter, Princess Serrena of Sparta, is like Taita—intelligent, possessor of warrior skills, master of a mythical blue sword with a ruby pommel—and because she was sired by Apollo, divine. Hurotas and Taita contrive alliances among multiple kings to invade Egypt and overthrow Utteric. These Egyptians seemed fascinated with Greek gods, but the novel skids into standard action territory—all swords, chariots, and magic with palace intrigue and set-piece battles. There’s a Serrena-Rameses magnetic attraction but little other human drama. Smith’s Taita continues to think much of himself—“my abundant charms soothed...my exquisite...protocol prevailed”—but constant self-appreciation creates an unsympathetic hero. The dialogue doesn’t distract, and characters are generally all good or all bad. The bad die gruesomely while the pace, like Taita’s self-regard, never slackens.
A swords-and-sandals action-adventure no worse or better than the first five in Smith’s Egyptian series.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-227648-3
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
Readers may wish to tackle this heart-pounding novel in highly populated, well-lit areas—snacks optional.
Some thrillers produce shivers, others trigger goose bumps; Cutter’s graphic offering will have readers jumping out of their skins.
Scoutmaster Dr. Tim Riggs takes his troop for their annual camping trip to Falstaff Island, an uninhabited area not far from their home on Prince Edward Island. The five 14-year-old boys who comprise Troop 52 are a diverse group: popular school jock, Kent, whose father is the chief of police; best friends Ephraim and Max, one the son of a petty thief who’s serving time in prison and the other the son of the coroner who also serves as the local taxidermist; Shelley, an odd loner with a creepy proclivity for animal torture and touching girls’ hair; and Newton, the overweight nerdy kid who’s the butt of the other boys’ jokes. When a skeletal, voracious, obviously ill man shows up on the island the first night of their trip, Tim’s efforts to assist him unleash a series of events which the author describes in gruesome, deliciously gory detail. Tom Padgett is the subject of a scientific test gone horribly wrong, or so it seems, and soon, the Scouts face a nightmare that worms its way into the group and wreaks every kind of havoc imaginable. With no way to leave the island (the boat Tom arrived on is disabled, and the troop was dropped off by a different boat), the boys fight to survive. Cutter’s narrative of unfolding events on the island is supplemented with well-placed interviews, pages from diaries, and magazine and newspaper articles, which provide answers to the reader in bits and pieces—but perhaps more importantly, it also delivers much-needed respites from the intense narrative as the boys battle for their lives on the island. Cutter (who created this work under a pseudonym) packs a powerful punch by plunging readers into gut-wrenching, explicit imagery that’s not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach.
Readers may wish to tackle this heart-pounding novel in highly populated, well-lit areas—snacks optional.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1771-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
Yes, it’s formula. Yes, it’s not as gritty an exercise in swamp mayhem as Hiaasen, Buchanan, or Crews might turn in. But,...
“I started dreaming of getting rich, which, in Florida anyway, can lead to serious trouble”: another blockbuster in the making from Grisham (Rogue Lawyer, 2015, etc.), the ascended master of the legal procedural.
If justice is blind, it is also served, in theory, by incorruptible servants. Emphasize “in theory,” for as Grisham’s latest opens, judicial investigator Lacy Stoltz is confronted with the unpleasant possibility that a highly regarded judge may be on the take. The charge comes, discreetly, from a former lawyer–turned-jailbird-turned-lawyer again, who spins out a seemingly improbable tale of racketeering that weds the best elements of Gulf Coast society with the worst, from the brilliant legal minds of Tallahassee to some very unpleasant lads once styled as the Catfish Mafia, now reborn in an alt-version, the Coast Mafia. Lacy’s brief is to find out just how rotten the rotten judge is—and the answer is plenty. Naturally, this knowledge is not acquired without cost; the body count rises, bad things happen to good people, and for a time, at least, the villains get away with murder and more. Grisham has never been strong on characterization: Lacy, we learn, is content to be single, “to live alone, to sleep in the center of the bed, to clean up only after herself,” and so forth, but beyond that the reader doesn’t get much sense of what drives her to put herself in the way of flying bullets and sneering counsel: “His associate was Ian Archer, an unsmiling sort who refused to shake hands with anyone and reeked of surliness.” In laid-back Florida? Indeed, and in Grisham’s busy hands, a lot of players come and go, some fated to sleep with the manatees.
Yes, it’s formula. Yes, it’s not as gritty an exercise in swamp mayhem as Hiaasen, Buchanan, or Crews might turn in. But, like eating a junk burger, even though you probably shouldn’t, it’s plenty satisfying.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-385-54119-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
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