In contrast to the first installment, there is very little entertaining interaction between the immortal Beauchamps and...
Second in de la Cruz’s increasingly convoluted mélange of witchcraft and Norse mythology, set in fictional North Hampton, Long Island.
When we last saw Joanna Beauchamp and her witchly brood, the sacred bridge, Bofrir, had been destroyed, and the sun god, Fryr, aka Joanna’s son Freddie, was blamed, because his signature trident (now missing) was found at the scene. Although it was clear then that the trickster god, Loki, was the real culprit (isn’t he always?), the Valkyries consigned Freddie to Limbo, from which he has recently escaped. He’s now holed up in North Hampton’s no-tell motel (dubbed the Ucky Star for its missing neon letter). His twin sister, Freya, love goddess and mixologist extraordinaire at the local watering hole, is bringing Freddie food and trying to clear his name. Her boyfriend, Killian (the god Balder who is Loki’s nemesis from way back), bears a trident-shaped mark—could he have framed Freddie? Joanna's oldest, Ingrid, aka hearth-deity Erda, has her own challenges: Her nascent romance with aptly named policeman Matt Noble is about to founder on her intractable virginity. Not only that, thieving pixies have invaded North Hampton, and Ingrid is hiding them in her mother's attic until she can discern how to cure their amnesia and return them to their home in another dimension. In a forest near the Beauchamp house, Joanna happens upon a burial mound and some runes. Could this be the final resting spot of a kindred spirit, hanged during the colonial witch hunts, and if so, why hasn’t she been reborn, like Freya and Ingrid, who died in Salem? Only a trip back in time can solve these enigmas.
In contrast to the first installment, there is very little entertaining interaction between the immortal Beauchamps and their human neighbors, and the Norse arcana is about as exciting as a romp through Tolkien’s Silmarillion. Readers can, nevertheless, look forward to Book III, which promises to place the Beauchamps back in the 17th century where all their troubles began.Pub Date: June 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4013-2396-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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