Though he brings a tender compassion to many of his characters, Turtledove is no Tolstoy. This vast portrait of nations in...
Fourth outing, with a cliffhanger that promises more, in Turtledove’s tangled fantasy epic of empires fighting a pointless war in which magic kills just as horribly as TNT. It’s too late to say that others have done the sorcery-instead-of-science gimmick better and more elegantly. In his continuing effort to show that human history, even in a drably imagined world reminiscent of late–19th-century Europe, is pluralistic at every level, Turtledove (Through the Darkness, 2001, etc.) piles on subplots involving over a hundred characters in a story that’s too complicated to achieve any momentum. Under the possibly mad King Mezentio, the violent forces of Algrave try to conquer the no-less-aggressive Kingdom of Unkerlant, with the Algravians being a bit worse because they derive the source of their magical powers from murdering the Kuusamians, Turtledove’s vague stand-ins for Jews. With many other minority peoples involved, some willingly, some not, Turtledove has bleached his setting of the customary sense of wonder that magic fantasies can offer, substituting an oppressively gritty realism that comes off half-baked. Instead of telephones, soldiers communicate by magic crystals, shoot beams of fire from magic staffs, fly dragons that drop incendiary eggs, ride behemoths over land, go under the sea clinging to submersing leviathans, and move supplies on trains that run along ley lines. Meanwhile, in an attempt to oppose Algrave’s murderous sorcery, Mages are developing magic that can alter the flow of time, adding even more complexity to a story that desperately needs a sense of direction.
Though he brings a tender compassion to many of his characters, Turtledove is no Tolstoy. This vast portrait of nations in conflict makes War and Peace a breezy read.Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-765-30036-2
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002
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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