A sprawling, gorgeous intergenerational saga, in which the spice and savor of traditional India progresses painfully into the present–the changing of women’s lives and the dimunition of the man as household god. Told through the mysterious embroidery of one family’s tapestry–its life, loves, regrets, secrets, deaths, and even what comes after death–Song of the Cuckoo Bird is mesmerizing.
London Harcourt's father is bent on subjugating the world's magic to British rule. But since London is a mere female, he hasn't bothered to tell her so. He's said only that he's leading a voyage to the Greek isles. No matter, after a smothering marriage and three years of straitlaced widowhood, London jumps at the opportunity - unfortunately, right into the arms of Bennett Day. Bennett is a ladies' man, when he's not dodging lethal attacks to protect the powers of the ancients from men like London's father...
Gemma Murphy has been following Catullus Graves and his friends for some time now. After first seeing him in the Northwest Territory of Canada, she now finds herself on a boat, to England. A reporter, she loves to investigate, and she knows Catullus and his crew have many secrets.Catullus is a member of The Blades of the Rose, a secret organization that protects Sources, those items that hold magical power throughout the world from the evil Heirs of Albion. The Heirs now have the primal source, and have plans to use it for world domination. The Blades are hot on their trail, and are willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to stop them.
This book has lots of adventure and fight scenes, like the Indiana Jones movies that the cover reminds you of. And yet there is time for both main characters to reflect on their feelings for each other, so the reader gets to watch the relationship develop from both perspectives. There is humor, excitement, passion -- the adventure plot and the romance plot are integrated in a way that really works for me.
Carter, a Yale law professor and distinguished conservative African-American intellectual known for his nonfiction (The Culture of Disbelief), has written a first-rate legal thriller guaranteed to broaden his audience. The narrator, Talcott Garland, is a law professor at Elm Harbor University whose occasional Carteresque editorializing about politics and justice are saved from didacticism by his abiding existential loneliness.
