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 beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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