Will truth and justice prevail? Stay tuned. A pleasure for Abraham’s legion of fans.
Finally, the bankers get a fantasy that doesn’t involve our pension funds.
Inaugurating a new series, prolific fantasy novelist Abraham (A Shadow in Summer, 2006, etc.) draws deeply from the treasure vault of genre conventions and tosses some aside. Almost all fantasy, Abraham has observed, derives from J.R.R. Tolkien and the faux-medieval-European worlds he created. This effort is something different, even approaching science fiction in its imaginative geography, and with a strange sort of anthropology to boot—one of the first people we meet, for instance, is an exemplar of “the thirteen races of humanity” and she has fearsome tusks to match her gigantic fingers, a sort of Tolkienesque dwarf in reverse. This ain’t your grandpa’s Tolkien, either, to judge by some of the dialogue: “Who the fuck are you?” asks a sailor, to which Strider—beg pardon, Marcus, his figurative cousin—replies, “The man telling you that’s enough.” It’s as if Clint Eastwood went to Narnia, which, come to think of it, isn’t a bad Hollywood pitch. But the setup isn’t quite as macho as all that, for in the gathering storm of Forces of Evil versus good guys, it’s a young girl, Cithrin the half-Cinnae, who’s entrusted with the secrets of the bank—and we’re not talking just any old double-entry bookkeeping either. But even the fattest wallet doesn’t stand up to a double-edged broadsword, and there things get interesting. All the makings of a standard fantasy are there: an improbable band battles seemingly insurmountable odds to save humankind and restore someone’s birthright, evil comes close to triumphing, the darkness descends and then... But Abraham avoids the excesses of formula, and if the back-and-forth is sometimes a little flat (“My Lord Issandrian forgets that this is not the first violence that your disagreements with House Kalliam have spawned”), the story moves along at a nice clip.
Will truth and justice prevail? Stay tuned. A pleasure for Abraham’s legion of fans.Pub Date: April 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-316-08068-2
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
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
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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