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Chargement... The Islandpar Tim Lebbon
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. Kel is a member of the Core, a secret army protecting Noreela from the Strangers, an alien race that's been sending spies to investigate the land. At least, until an operation goes wrong, people die, and Kel decides to chuck it all and hide in a small fishing village. All's well, even though he'll be killed if he's ever found by the Core. Then, during a massive storm, an island appears off the coast off the village, which is wiped out in the aftermath. People from the island come ashore to help with the recovery, but just who are they? And do they really ust want to help? In The Island, Tim Lebbon has mixed fantasy with a classic alien invasion horror story and just a bit of steampunk to make a pretty good story - just about the best mix I can think of for escapist fare. I was a bit hesitant at first, since this is the fourth book he's set in Noreela, but as it turns out, this one works quite well as a stand-alone novel. Now I've got to stir up the previous books! aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Appartient à la sérieNoreela (Book 5)
"No one knew about the Strangers from beyond Noreela, and it was the Core's job to make sure it stayed that way. Kel Boon was once an agent of the land's most secret organization, tracking, observing, and eliminating the Strangers as part of an elite Core team. But then one horrifying encounter left his superior officer--and lover--dead, along with many innocents. And Kel has been running ever since. But the worst was still to come. Forsaking magic, living as a simple wood-carver, Kel came to the fishing village of Pavmouth Breaks to hide. But when a mysterious island appears out to sea during a cataclysmic storm, sending tidal waves to smash the village, his Core training tells him to expect the worst. How can he warn the surviving villagers--especially the beautiful young witch Namior--that the visitors sailing in from the island may not be the peace-loving pilgrims they claim to be? That this might be the invasion the Core has feared all along ... and that he, Kel Boon, may be Noreela's last chance?"--P. [4] of cover. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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Lebbon's world, Noreela, has a long, dark, distinct history, chronicled in several novels and shorter works, but you don't need to know it to enjoy this stand-alone book (though if you want details, here's a great link: http://www.noreela.com/noreela.htm). I've only read one other Tim Lebbon book before, After the War, a collection of two very bleak Noreela novellas, and I was both happy and apprehensive when I got The Island. Happy because I thought After the War had superb writing -- plotting and characterization and world-building -- and apprehensive because the stories both had endings of such hopelessness that they were difficult to read. The Island has its grim and distressing moments, but the ending has enough light to it that you're not ready to throw yourself out a window. There is potential for the characters to have happiness or at least some sense of peace, and the invasion plot has a satisfactory (and bloody) resolution.
Kel and Namior both narrate and they play off one another well: Kel wants to hide and rest, to avoid the world and live in simple anonymity, while Namior is young and hopeful and wants to experience life outside her tiny fishing village. They react very different to this sort of enormous, potentially world-destroying plan in its beginning stages (after the Komadians take over the village, the rest of Noreela is within reach) but they end up in the same place; they both want to avoid trouble, yet their sense of responsibility leads them into doing the opposite.
The Island has a complicated sense of moral ambiguity, in which the bad guys have understandable reasons for being monsters and the good guys resist being heroes for equally understandable reasons. Backstory -- the past -- is important to both the characters and the world, and Lebbon does a great job bringing it in organically without going overboard on details you don't care about. I never felt buried in an info-dump. There's a decent amount of stealthy action, but what Lebbon really does well is evoke a constant sense of dread, low-level at first and increasing slowly to oppressive levels as Kel's paranoia proves to be justified. The final scenes are suspenseful and brutal but, like I said before, there's an undercurrent to the ending that people in this bleak world can succeed, can save something even if they also lose plenty, too. That's something I didn't get out of After the War, and I was glad not to read a novel-length story of such hopelessness. ( )