Is Ice and Fire drawing to a close? There’s plenty of wiggle room for more volumes in the series, but on the evidence, one...
The fifth installment in Martin’s (A Game of Thrones, 1996, etc.) Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series.
Fans of the author’s work will likely be satisfied with this volume ipso facto, for it’s vintage Martin: It’s a little cynical, plenty dark, with not many laughs and, truth be told, not much action. There’s the usual blend of exposition, sometimes seemingly endless, and the usual swords-and-sorcery dialogue: “The plunder from Astapor was much less than you were promised in Volantis, and I took the lion’s share of it.” “Two kings to wake the dragon. The father first and then the son, so both die kings.” “False friends, treacherous servants, men who had professed undying love, even her own blood…all of them had deserted her in her hour of need.” Martin has been likened to J.R.R. Tolkien, but Tolkien was never quite so ponderous, and certainly not so obsessed with bodily functions of various sorts: “The Grand Maester befouled himself in dying, and the stink was so abominable that I thought I might choke.” “When you bugger a man you expect a squeal or two.” Indeed. Apart from all that, this volume furthers Martin’s long tale of a vast world war of the kind that sweeps through Middle Earth in LOTR, though some of the characters seem to have lost their taste for it; the once-scary Tyrion Lannister mostly mopes around, alternately insomniacal and prurient, while out on The Wall the stalwart Jon Snow comes over all Hamlety, wondering what to do, soliciting input and then keeping his own counsel. A few hundred pages of this, and one longs in vain for piles of headless corpses and flesh singed with the fire of dragon breath—something, anything, to induce a squeal.
Is Ice and Fire drawing to a close? There’s plenty of wiggle room for more volumes in the series, but on the evidence, one wonders if Martin isn’t getting a little tired of it.Pub Date: July 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-553-80147-7
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
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
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