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The fifth book in the Irish medieval mystery series finds Sister Fidelma investigating a murder in a seemingly tranquil town, only to uncover a web of secrets that everyone wants to keep hidden. And now she must race to discover the truth before she becomes the next victim...."[Sister Fidelma is] a brilliant and beguiling heroine."-Publishers Weekly "The literary successor to Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael."-Southern Star (Ireland)"A treat for history buffs who devoured Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization."-BooklistFrom Publishers WeeklyRich with Irish lore, Tremayne's fifth entry in his Sister Fidelma series (following The Subtle Serpent) introduces readers to further Celtic law, religion and mores in a multilayered search for a cold-blooded killer. In A.D. 668, Fidelma, an advocate in the law courts of Ireland, is sent by her brother, the king of Muman, to investigate the murder of a Celtic chieftain. Though a blind, deaf mute named M?en was found holding a bloody knife near the chieftain's corpse, Fidelma and her Saxon friend Eadulf are not convinced that the man is guilty. For one thing, M?en is also supposed to have killed the chieftain's sister, who raised M?en since he was a babe, and Fidelma finds it hard to believe that in one night the blind deaf-mute would slay the two people in his compound who had befriended him. As Fidelma and Eadulf scrutinize the evidence, they cast about for other suspects among the chieftain's family and subjects. They find a daughter who hated her father and quickly took power after his death, a wife who scorned her husband, a cleric whose religion leans toward Roman practices and a wealthy cousin who assumed that he was the chieftain's heir. Despite several threats to their lives, the sleuthing sister and her sidekick persist and finally ferret out the culprit. In painstaking detail, Tremayne follows Fidelma's careful analysis of the facts while spicing the narrative with asides on the battle between Roman Catholic and Celtic views of theology and law. Though the secondary characters lack complexity, Fidelma's own is strong enough to carry the story, albeit slowly, to its finale. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistWhile most of seventh-century Europe was shrouded in intellectual darkness, Ireland enjoyed a period of unprecedented enlightenment. During this era, Irish universities flourished and women were accorded the same rights, protections, and professional responsibilities as men. As an advocate of the seventh-century Brehon courts, Tremayne's Sister Fedelma, a legal scholar and expert in both criminal and civil codes, is once again charged with the task of gathering and assessing the evidence in a perplexing murder case. When Eber, chieftain of the rural outpost of Araglin, is brutally stabbed to death, Fedelma's brother, the king of Muman, requests that she undertake an investigation and see that justice is dispensed. Though most of Eber's clansmen are eager to implicate a defenseless deaf-mute in the homicide, Fedelma exposes an array of suspects and motives. As she delves deeper into the past, she uncovers a shocking family secret and a tangled web of hatred, deceit, and greed. Margaret Flanagan Views: 58
Tassin has rushed into danger in a bid to rescue Sabre, and she and Tarl have been kidnapped, but the man who holds her prisoner is a high king with strange ties to Myon Two, and Tassin learns the truth about Sabre’s origins. The cyber, however, cannot cope with the plethora of illogical, painful emotions the loss of the girl he loves brings, for he is convinced he will never find her again… Views: 58
EDITORIAL REVIEW: FIRST IN A NEW SERIES! *“There will be times, girl, when all your magic ain’t going to be enough, times when it will seem to dry up like mud under the noonday sun, or even make matters worse. . . .” *Kallie Rivière, a fiery Cajun hoodoo apprentice with a talent for trouble, finds herself smack-dab in the middle of one of those times her mentor warned her about when she visits New Orleans to attend the Hecatean Alliance’s annual carnival: her hard-bodied conjurer hookup ends up dead in her blood-drenched bed. And he was killed by something that Kallie would never dream of touching—the darkest of dark juju, soul-eating juju—a black dust hex that may have been meant to kill *her. *Now Kallie has to use every bit of hoodoo knowledge and bayou-bred mojo she possesses to clear her own name and find the killer—even as that dark sorcerer hunts Kallie and her friends. But Kallie’s search for the truth soon leads her in a direction she never anticipated—back home to Bayou Cyprés Noir, and to Gabrielle LaRue, Kallie’s aunt, protector, and hoodoo mentor . . . who is looking more and more like she just might be the one who wants Kallie dead. Views: 58
From Publishers WeeklyIn this solid sequel to Hominids (2002), the much-praised first volume in Sawyer's Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, which introduced an alternate Earth where for reasons unknown our species, Homo sapiens, went extinct and Neanderthals flourished, Neanderthal physicist Ponder Boddit brings Canadian geneticist Mary Vaughan back to his world to explore the near-utopian civilization of the Neanderthals. Boddit serves as a Candide figure, the naive visitor whose ignorance about our society makes him a perfect tool to analyze human tendencies toward violence, over-population and environmental degradation. The Neanderthals have developed a high artistic, ethical and scientific culture without ever inventing farming-they're still hunters and gatherers-and this allows the author to make some interesting and generally unrecognized points about the downside of the discovery of agriculture. Much of the novel is devoted to either the discussion of ideas such as these or to Boddit and Vaughan's developing love affair. Sawyer keeps things moving by throwing in an attempted assassination, his protagonists' confrontation with a rapist and, on a larger scale, the growing danger of what appears to be the imminent reversal of Earth's magnetic field. As the middle volume in a trilogy, this book doesn't entirely stand on its own, but it is extremely well done. When complete, the Neanderthal Parallax should add significantly to Sawyer's reputation. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistPonter Boddit, the Neanderthal physicist thrown into the human world in Hominids [BKL Je 1&15 02], is relieved to be back in his own safe, unpolluted, thoughtfully governed universe, though he misses his human friend, Mary Vaughn, who in her world has been offered a plum research position. Glad to leave the Canadian university at which she was brutally raped, she misses Ponter and worries that, because she never reported her attacker, other women remain at risk. Both universes' governments can't decide whether to permit travel between them, but Ponter forces the question by assembling a first ambassadorial party, though as it happens, he goes on ahead of it. He then persuades Mary to visit his world, where she faces aspects of Neanderthal culture that disturb her, such as Ponter's male lover, Adikor, and near-total male-female segregation. Then another woman is raped on Mary's former campus. Look for the further volume about Ponter and Mary that disquieting ramifications of the interaction of the alternate worlds and their magnetic fields portends. Roberta JohnsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Views: 58
The Warrior Series by award winning author Rebecca Royce—Initiation, Driven, Subversive, Redemption, and Justice—all in one place.Rachel Clancy was born to fight the monsters that go bump in the night. In a post-apocalyptic world, she and her fellow Warriors are all that stand between what is left of humanity and the monsters who stalk them. Her destiny seems written—fight or die. Until one fateful trip Upwards changes everything. Follow the story as one sixteen year old girl changes the course for human kind forever. Views: 58
