Fans of the previous volumes won’t be disappointed; more skeptical readers can appreciate and admire Elliott’s inspired...
Following Shadow (2015), the final entry in the innovative but opaque Pendulum trilogy.
Former London journalist Eric and Case, his alcoholic friend (now transformed into a small dragon), stumbled through a hidden doorway into Levaal, a land where gods, dragons, wizards, and other beings engage in a seemingly endless power struggle. Vous, lord of a dragon-shaped castle, has transformed himself into a sort of flower-power hippie god after—accidentally?—creating Shadow, a baffling and uncomprehending entity with weird powers…who resembles Eric. Vous’ daughter, Aziel, takes over the castle with plans to rule Levaal, though her sometime lover, Eric, has no stomach for lordship and wanders off. The dragons plot to free themselves from their prison in the sky—a sky made of glowing stone; some hunt humans for sport, others prefer to manipulate them. The vast Wall dividing Levaal North from South has fallen, allowing the humanoid haiyens to cross; one faction insists that humans able to adopt a Zen-like serenity will become invisible to the dragons; a second faction urges humans to fight them, a course most favor. The gods, personifications of things (Mountain, Tempest) or attributes (Valor, Wisdom), wake up and do, well, godlike but pointless deeds. All this isn’t the half of it. Elliott never stood a chance of controlling his creation and often substitutes explicit violence for narrative clarity. Still, he earns top marks for ingenuity and writes an attractively supple prose. While individual subplots often fascinate and beguile, even tenacious readers will look in vain for a unifying concept—witness the final scenes, which, while dazzling, bear little relation to anything that’s gone before.
Fans of the previous volumes won’t be disappointed; more skeptical readers can appreciate and admire Elliott’s inspired resourcefulness while believing nary a word.Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3190-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A somewhat fragmentary nocturnal shadows Jim Nightshade and his friend Will Halloway, born just before and just after midnight on the 31st of October, as they walk the thin line between real and imaginary worlds. A carnival (evil) comes to town with its calliope, merry-go-round and mirror maze, and in its distortion, the funeral march is played backwards, their teacher's nephew seems to assume the identity of the carnival's Mr. Cooger. The Illustrated Man (an earlier Bradbury title) doubles as Mr. Dark. comes for the boys and Jim almost does; and there are other spectres in this freakshow of the mind, The Witch, The Dwarf, etc., before faith casts out all these fears which the carnival has exploited... The allusions (the October country, the autumn people, etc.) as well as the concerns of previous books will be familiar to Bradbury's readers as once again this conjurer limns a haunted landscape in an allegory of good and evil. Definitely for all admirers.
Pub Date: June 15, 1962
ISBN: 0380977273
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962
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