A vibrant, fast-paced, and tense fusion of epic fantasy and hard-boiled detective yarn.
This second volume in a series explores the war between Elves and humans in the realms of the Verin Empire.
The latest from Ray (Gedlund, 2014) continues the broad outline of his debut novel while striking a different register. In a switch from high fantasy to gumshoe mystery (and in a shift to nearly 10 years after the incidents in the first installment), the narrative this time focuses on the character Gus Baston, a wayward private eye in the bustling city of Gemmen. Gus is dodging his memories of the events of the previous book (“The war against Gedlund’s armies of grasping dead and the chilling laughter of its Everlords as they descended from the sky”). He goes from one paying job to the next, drowning his memories in alcohol amid Gemmen’s nightlife. When Gus takes a new case that eventually embroils him in the kidnapping of a prominent engineer, he’s thrust into the complicated and dangerous politics of insurrection. The Elves of the Verin Empire seek their return to power in the Great Restoration, an event long thwarted by the proliferating human use of magic-negating iron in ever expanding railway systems and obelisks. It seems that after a generation of quiet, the Elven Wardens have emerged to kidnap the key engineer of the system slowly strangling their future. The rich fantasy world Ray introduced in the series opener, a fun-house-mirror blending of Victorian-era technology and sword-and-sorcery staples like elves and magic, is here steadily and very skillfully elaborated. The author’s ear for dramatic stagecraft succeeds in bringing his large cast of secondary characters to life. Fans of detailed alternate-urban fantasies like the New Crobuzon tales of China Miéville should enjoy the ways Ray fleshes out the rich palaces and mean streets of both the city of Gemmen and the far frontiers where the larger background themes of empires in conflict and colonialism play out. This is intricate fantasy work in a minor key.
A vibrant, fast-paced, and tense fusion of epic fantasy and hard-boiled detective yarn.Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5498-4450-8
Page Count: 491
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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