Distinctive worldbuilding and unforgettable characters make this bloody tale a must-read for fantasy fans.
In Blackhurst’s novel set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, an exiled girl attempts to prove herself as a warrior—only to discover that nothing about her world is what it seems.
The Named live a meager existence in a regimented world. Men and women live in separate villages, only having direct contact on the designated Breed Day. Angels, who occasionally visit and introduce wondrous inventions, such as glass, perpetrate legends of a Godmonster who destroyed the Earth; the angels are said to have saved 300 babies, who went on to build New Eden. Alizard—the daughter of Thenewt the Warleader, and Arat, the society’s religious leader, known as the Candle—is destined to follow in her mother’s footsteps. However, when her hair turns red, it marks her as one of the Stained, and she’s immediately cast out. She chooses to train as a warrior and soon becomes one of the very best. Meanwhile, the Reddening sweeps through the land—a horrific disease that kills by “pop[ping]” its victims: “Alizard watched as the flesh of his arms melted and then his bones. She closed her eyes. His howls ceased. She opened her eyes and his head was now gone.” When the Thorns, a small rebel group of runaway Stained, kidnap the Candle, Alizard embarks on a quest to save her. Joining her is Theox, a young Thorn who claims that the abductors have taken Alizard’s mother to a place called “the bubble”; he also happens to be the perceived source of the Reddening. The pair encounter people and places that force Alizard to question everything she’s been told about the world—and the angels who protect it.
Blackhurst has crafted an intricate fantasy that’s full of violence and features breathtaking twists. Some readers may find Alizard a challenging protagonist to like, in part due to her society’s mantra to “unfeel” when faced with complex emotions. However, as she and Theox uncover more of their world (including a shocking revelation, alongside an equally unexpected death), Alizard becomes a hero of mythic proportions. Mysteries within mysteries unravel, such as the ultimate purpose of the Glass Tree that the Named build under the direction of the angels, including the Archangel Gabriel. However, this unraveling happens organically, without jarring exposition. Taut dialogue and rich descriptions (“She looked down at the red sand….The torchlight reflected off the occasional grain like a glass bead. Pure Godmonster blood, the dark red of angelic rubies.”) propel the novel toward a satisfying conclusion that does justice to the saga that comes before it. Blackhurst’s attention to detail truly brings the world to life, with small asides that make New Eden, and the laws that govern it, feel plausible and real: “Gabriel came down from heaven four times a year to track the progress of the Glass Tree. Among his metrics, he tracked the quantity of Stained burned in the furnace since his last visit.” Themes of power, ignorance, and sacrifice dominate the narrative, which offers a vividly rendered warning against forgetting the past.
Distinctive worldbuilding and unforgettable characters make this bloody tale a must-read for fantasy fans.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2024
ISBN: 9798988484325
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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