The High Druid's Blade: The Defenders of Shannara by Terry Brooks
Brooks (Witch Wraith, 2013, etc.) returns with a stand-alone Shannara novel starring Paxon Leah. … The story does move briskly, and there are enjoyable bits of business involving battles with werewolves and scenes of supernatural combat, and the familiar stations of Paxon’s “hero’s journey” are comforting in their familiarity. Square, sturdy, straight-down-the-middle fantasy entertainment, enjoyable for the Shannara faithful.
- Kirkus Reviews
- Kirkus Reviews
The Lost Island: A Gideon Crew Novel (Gideon Crew series) by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Preston and Child (Gideon’s Sword, 2011, etc.) sail Gideon Crew into his third adventure for Effective Engineering Solutions, a "company specializing in failure analysis" that's the brainchild of Eli Glinn, a banged-up ex-military genius who pilots his enterprise from a power wheelchair. … The characters are static. The plot is breakneck violent. Geekery is prevalent, with Glinn employing QBA—supercomputer quantitative behavioral analysis, combining history, sociology and statistics which "can predict, to a certain extent, human behavior"—which works well except for the unforeseen murder and mayhem, betrayal and suicide. Preston and Child keep an eye out for the legendary and introduce Cyclops, mystical humanoid, to stretch the boundaries of the action-adventure novel.
“Richly imagined and continually surprising. . . . The strongest book in Grossman’s series. It not only offers a satisfying conclusion to Quentin Coldwater’s quests, earthly and otherwise, but also considers complex questions about identity and selfhood as profound as they are entertaining. . . . The Magician’s Land, more than any other book in the trilogy, wrestles with the question of humanity. . . . This is a gifted writer, and his gifts are at their apex in The Magician’s Land.”
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