An intriguingly multilayered, if slightly uneven, novel of one man’s Italian adventures.
Leviant presents a surreal work of “true fiction,” set in modern-day Italy.
Narrator CL has been awarded a writing fellowship in Venice by the Committee on the Arts of the Jewish Venice Quincentenary. CL’s goal is to write about the colorful 16th-century rabbi Leone da Modena, who was also a prolific gambler and author. CL meets some intriguing figures during his stay; at a synagogue, for example, he encounters a silent woman with two different-colored eyes. It turns out the woman doesn’t speak at all, and it will take CL some time to get her to open up to him. He also meets a compelling woman from France named Mazal who calls herself “almost ultra-Orthodox”; she and CL, after some initial awkwardness, find themselves drawn to each other, despite his lack of French and her halting English. Their rapport eventually leads them to accompany each other on a visit to Padua, where she seeks to visit the final resting place of another famous rabbi. (The 11th-century Spanish Hebrew poet Shlomo ibn Gvirol also plays a surprisingly significant role in the novel.) At other points, CL encounters a jogging, multilingual rabbi and a mysterious poet who writes with a quill; with so many offbeat characters, one wonders if CL will be able to get any writing done at all. Leviant incorporates a number of intriguing, and thought-provoking points about Judaism into his story, including a discussion of whether Jewish people should visit cemeteries. There are some moments, however, that are less compelling, particularly during some of CL and Mazal’s interactions, as when he comments to her that she’s “delicious, like fresh baguette”; readers may not share Mazal’s sentiment that CL is a “laughy man.” Thankfully, this is not solely a work about oddball seduction; things take a decisively strange turn late in the story, as it turns out that there’s more to CL’s new acquaintances than expected.
An intriguingly multilayered, if slightly uneven, novel of one man’s Italian adventures.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-60489-294-9
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.
A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.
Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374172
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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