There are some standout stories here, but overall, it’s more of a treat for superfans than a way for casual readers to dip...
A sprawling collection of mini-epic fantasies from genre stalwart Sanderson (The Bands of Mourning, 2016, etc.).
An expert forger confronts her greatest challenge yet: a man’s soul. A woman fights for survival on the edge of a forest swarming with bloodthirsty ghosts. A man risks his life to save a mysterious island that tries to kill him at every step. In these stories, Sanderson extends the worlds he’s created in his many novels—and begins to hint at how all these worlds are connected. This kind of thing is like catnip for a certain type of fantasy fan, and fans of Sanderson’s other works will eagerly devour this collection, in which familiar characters return and familiar worlds are further explored. The novella Edgedancer, for example, gives a minor character from the Stormlight Archive series a chance to fight assassins, face down storms, and, as she puts it, “be awesome.” When these stories are good, they’re very good, with all the quick wit, richly detailed settings, and memorable characters fans have come to expect from this prolific writer. But some of the stories in the collection are more like deleted scenes from other stories than like stand-alone tales, and others focus too much on worldbuilding and not enough on Sanderson’s real gifts for creating character, emotion, and suspense.
There are some standout stories here, but overall, it’s more of a treat for superfans than a way for casual readers to dip into Sanderson’s work.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7653-9116-2
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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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