A confident supernatural comedy from writers who can turn from laughter to tears on a dime.
A scientist and a man of faith must find common ground to save a friendly desert community in the American Southwest.
Just kidding—of course we’re back in the weird town of Night Vale, where all the conspiracies you’ve ever heard of are true. For interlopers who haven’t yet experienced Welcome to Night Vale, it started as a podcast mimicking a bizarre community radio broadcast, later became a live touring production, and lives on in a first novel by Fink and Cranor (Welcome to Night Vale, 2015, etc.). This sequel will be a delight for fans but also features a funny but nuanced story about the chasm between faith and science. Our lead character is Nilanjana Sikdar, a levelheaded scientist from Indiana who has come to work with head scientist Carlos, husband to Cecil Palmer, the voice of Night Vale. But strange things start happening when first Larry Leroy’s house and later Big Rico’s Pizza fall into giant sinkholes. On the trail of a suspect known as “the Wordsmith,” Nilanjana meets Darryl Ramirez, a good-natured proselytizer for the Joyous Congregation of the Smiling God, a faith that believes redemption comes from being devoured by...something. The book includes whimsical pamphlets designed by Jessica Hayworth explaining the faith. While the new story is light on our friend Cecil—whose romance with Carlos is quietly breathtaking—readers spend more time with Carlos, whose story answers some lingering questions about this strange otherworld. As the Smiling God grows more dangerous, the fundamental conflict between Darryl’s faith and Nilanjana’s science threatens to tear the town asunder. With cameos from minor characters and the same fanciful sense of humor, the authors deliver not only a love letter to fans, but also a compelling drama that shows people coming together in a world that feels like it’s coming apart—which isn’t the worst message to broadcast these days.
A confident supernatural comedy from writers who can turn from laughter to tears on a dime.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247605-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A somewhat fragmentary nocturnal shadows Jim Nightshade and his friend Will Halloway, born just before and just after midnight on the 31st of October, as they walk the thin line between real and imaginary worlds. A carnival (evil) comes to town with its calliope, merry-go-round and mirror maze, and in its distortion, the funeral march is played backwards, their teacher's nephew seems to assume the identity of the carnival's Mr. Cooger. The Illustrated Man (an earlier Bradbury title) doubles as Mr. Dark. comes for the boys and Jim almost does; and there are other spectres in this freakshow of the mind, The Witch, The Dwarf, etc., before faith casts out all these fears which the carnival has exploited... The allusions (the October country, the autumn people, etc.) as well as the concerns of previous books will be familiar to Bradbury's readers as once again this conjurer limns a haunted landscape in an allegory of good and evil. Definitely for all admirers.
Pub Date: June 15, 1962
ISBN: 0380977273
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962
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