A breathtaking installment of an unforgettable fantasy series.
Eliott’s genre-bending fantasy/thriller/romance novel, the second in a series, explores a hellish landscape.
The story opens amid the destruction and detritus left in the wake of the Swell Driver, a cataclysmic flood that has raged through the very heart of the violent, fantastical cityscape of Hell’s Labyrinth. The streets teem with sordid wreckage, and the waters have laid bare more than the buildings’ facades—the fragile peace of a community built on crime has been ripped from its foundations, laying bare a refuse-strewn path to power for those hungry enough to seize it. In this chaos, Count Ulan Gueritus, the Raving Blade, emerges from the shadows, seeking to inflict a reign of terror upon the masses. But the same darkness that spawned the Raving Blade forged the only man who can stop him: Vazeer the Lash. Unfairly implicated in Gueritus’ web of treason and desperate to protect those he loves, Lash initially hopes to outmaneuver the madman—but sometimes, justice must be born of blood. To stop the Raving Blade, Lash must realign with Radrin Blackstar, an assassin with his own agenda, and a host of former compatriots who would just as soon see Vazeer dead. As his city roils, Vazeer must consider how much darkness a man can take before its current pulls him under. In this second entry in the author’s Shadow Bidder series, the story’s gritty landscape is captured in gorgeous prose: “Even the street fires, which earlier had snapped and spit in vivid upheaval, were now but glum red mounds, simmering so low that the surrounding faces remained soiled by shadow.” Readers will find themselves continually on edge, questioning their loyalties and guessing at the next twist. This emotional investment is compelled by an excellently rendered cast of characters, chiefly Vazeer the Lash, a humorous and complex antihero. Radrin Blackstar provides a fascinating and ominous counterbalance as an allied assassin with unclear allegiances. Despite the novel’s cold and murky depths, the overall tone is hopeful, pulling audiences into Lash’s vision for a city rebuilt. And though Lash’s reality is often brutal, the violence is rarely graphic.
A breathtaking installment of an unforgettable fantasy series.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9798986706542
Page Count: -
Publisher: Further Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.
A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.
Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374172
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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