A careful and affecting conclusion to an ambitious saga.
Couto’s epic trilogy about colonial Mozambique concludes with a harrowing trek from the conquered land.
The first book in Couto’s Sands of the Emperor series, Woman of the Ashes (2018), turned on clashes between rival Mozambican tribes before Portuguese forces claimed power in the late 1800s; the second, The Sword and the Spear (2020), focused on the unlikely romance between Imani, a young Mozambican woman, and a Portuguese sergeant. In this story, the deposed emperor, Ngungunyane, is being forcibly removed along with his court from the country and into exile, paraded in public on their way. (“Portugal needed such a display in order to discourage new uprisings on the part of the Africans,” Couto writes.) Imani, who’s pregnant, is attempting to serve as a neutral translator on this trip, but she finds herself buffeted by competing interests—Ngungunyane wants to claim her as another one of his wives, seditionists want her complicity in undoing the Portuguese colonists’ plans, and sailors subject her to various assaults, sexual and otherwise. There’s a plainspokenness to the prose (via Brookshaw’s translation) that belies the fact that, as in the prior two books, colonialism is a carnival of horrors, destroying families and wrecking folkways. The twist here, as the narrative makes its way to Lisbon, is that the degradations more fully expose the cruelty of Portugal’s press, diplomatic corps, and royalty, as Ngungunyane’s arrival provides an opportunity for moral posturing and power plays. Imani increasingly recognizes how untenable her position is: As her lover tells her, “The same narrative that paved the way for our encounter made our love impossible.” And it’s Imani and her child who fall under the greatest threat. The closing pages fast-forward the story into the 20th century and Mozambique’s path to independence, ending the saga on a more positive note. But the scars are lasting.
A careful and affecting conclusion to an ambitious saga.Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-374-60553-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
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
Bailey hits it out of the park with her latest spicy romance.
Two ambitious athletes plus one fake-dating arrangement—what could go wrong?
Though it’s only his first season for the Boston Bearcats hockey team, Robbie Corrigan has a well-established reputation as a playboy. He’s got major skills on the ice, and he’s also much more likely to love ’em and leave ’em than he is to build any long, meaningful relationships. Naturally, he’s just met the one woman who seems completely resistant to his charm: Skylar Page, a Boston University softball pitcher. When they meet over a friendly Saturday morning baseball game, Robbie instantly makes a poor impression by bragging to his teammates about his latest conquest within Skylar’s hearing. He thinks she’s gorgeous, though, and when he sets his sights on her, he’s surprised that she doesn’t seem to know it. Despite her initial distaste for Robbie, Skylar grudgingly confesses that she could use his help. If they pretend to date, maybe her current crush—her brother’s best friend—will finally sit up and take notice of her in a romantic way. The timing is less than ideal, since Robbie will have to team up with Skylar in the Page family’s latest wilderness competition, but it turns out that Robbie’s willingness to play fake boyfriend stems from some very real feelings. He wants to prove to her that he’s a changed man, and redeeming himself in her eyes starts with making sure she knows that she can really trust him. The latest addition to Bailey’s Big Shots series is a sexy, feel-good romance brimming over with the author’s trademark humor and dirty talk. While Skylar and Robbie’s dynamic doesn’t quite reach the level of enemies-to-lovers—he’s so head-over-heels for her that there’s no room for any real mean-spiritedness—their playful snark doubles as a welcome dash of foreplay in the lead-up to some seriously steamy scenes. Robbie’s efforts to show Skylar that he’s turned over a new leaf also result in some of the book’s best moments, emphasizing his commitment to becoming the type of man he knows she deserves.
Bailey hits it out of the park with her latest spicy romance.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780063380837
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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