A refreshingly unique take on the eternal battle of good versus evil that amuses while it philosophizes.
In Isaak’s fantasy novel, an unsuspecting man discovers the role he was born to play in defeating the forces of darkness on the battlefield known as Earth.
The year is 1969, and Crystal Keeling finds herself in Manhattan at the end of a six-month-long hitchhiking trip. The adventurous young woman dips her toes in a cult known as the Children of Pan, where Crystal was “asked if she’d be willing to play a lead role in The Children’s fertility rites…and when she discovered it involved no more than a little friendly semipublic sex, she was happy to oblige.” After a disappointing non-orgy with the cult’s goat-masked leader, Crystal wanders off to her next adventure. Cut to 35 years later, and Crystal’s adult son Arby is the result of that brief liaison. Living in Saudi Arabia at the time, Arby takes a flight home at his mother’s request. Then he meets Elaina, a blind woman who turns out to be not exactly mortal. Instead, she and Arby are dragged into an epic battle between the forces of light and darkness. Their main adversary is “an entity who lived in both worlds, the etheric and the physical,” who goes by the name of von Fleischer (aka: The Flayer). It turns out that the Children of Pan had been on to something, and Arby soon discovers powers he never knew existed. After Crystal is kidnapped, Arby must reconnect with his previous lives in order to cross “the bridge” into the Inner Planes—a process that he may never be able to find his way back from: “Constriction and form will have to contend with infinite space, and you will have to find a path between the two.” Only then does Arby have a chance at defeating von Fleischer and the darkness he brings once and for all.
Sex with a goat-masked cult leader might be considered a risky way to start a novel, but Isaak pulls it off by blending some absurdly humorous observations (such as one about unplanned pregnancies) with plenty of action and a shrewd eye for philosophy and religion: “It’s an ecosystem. There are entities who feed exclusively on love, entities who feed exclusively on war, even rarefied entities who feed on intellectual excitement. There are others with more catholic tastes, feeding on an array of emotions. Any of them, of course, thrive on worship, for these entities, when encountered by humans, are called gods.” Arby’s journey from ordinary man to bona fide Hero with a capital H is one that forces him to consider the inner workings of both the universe and himself. Naturalistic dialogue provides an easy way to bandy about various philosophical ideas, including the existence of past lives and our ability to shape our past, present, and future. And every time readers think they know where the plot might be going, Isaak tends to take a hard left to set off on new courses that will intrigue even as they baffle. A truly shocking outcome and the promise of a new beginning all make for an ending that, upon further reflection, perfectly fits a novel of this sort—one that constantly keeps readers on their toes.
A refreshingly unique take on the eternal battle of good versus evil that amuses while it philosophizes.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Utamatzi Inc.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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