With a little nip in the night, Anne’s fangs offer us the Dark Gift.
The Vampire Chronicles Annual Rice Report on vampirism in Louisiana (Blood and Gold, 2001, etc.) finds Queen Anne’s tiara firmly in place for a sweeping plot.
Lestat and his new protégé, Tarquin “Quinn” Blackwood, 22, six feet four, fly over clouds, then feast luridly on a pair of heroin-addicted whores who’ve murdered for money. As Lestat says, drinking the blood of evildoers, sucking their sins and lives into one’s own blood, lends vampires a certain usefulness, though not humanity. Lestat has a fresh problem: the good, gray, ever namby-pamby scholars of the Talamasca have issued a Declaration of Enmity against him, which he wants rescinded. Quinn’s problem is that since earliest childhood he’s been hounded by a doppelgänger named Goblin who grows only stronger as Quinn ages and sucks out tastes of Quinn’s blood after Quinn feasts. Quinn lives with Aunt Queen at Blackwood Manor, deep in Sugar Devil Swamp. His Maker turned him only two years ago, and now the novice bloodsucker seeks Lestat for help with monstrous, supervampiric Goblin (Lestat can’t see Goblin, only the floating droplets of blood Goblin has drunk). Quinn is the bastard of Patsy Blackwood, a wannabe country-western singer, who conceived him at 16, father unknown. Now, the incorrigible Goblin keeps the child Quinn from attending school. For many years Quinn has young Lynelle as his teacher—until she dies in a road accident, Goblin crazed by her loss. At18, Quinn, who thinks he may be queer, finds himself having sex with an attic ghost named Rebecca. And the house has other ghosts as well. He later falls for red-haired, star-crossed Mona of The Mayfair Witches, famous from the earlier novel for sleeping with all her cousins, and now with Quinn. Then an androgynous telepathic stranger demands that Quinn refurbish the Hermitage in the swamp, after which he meets Arion and Petronia, who—but let’s not give that away.
With a little nip in the night, Anne’s fangs offer us the Dark Gift.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-41199-2
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
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 tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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