Wednesday, July 3, 2013

The Arrivals-Melissa Marr

The Arrivals


Melissa Marr

Morrow, Jul 2 2013, $24.99

ISBN 9780061826962



Based on information from Governor Soanes, the Arrivals (Edgar, Francis, Mary and siblings Kitty and Jack, and others) go to a peace negotiation with the brethren. Instead the brethren attack using guns and magic killing Mary. While her allies kill the rest, using a spell and a knife, Kitty slays the demon monk though she takes a bullet and burns from his blood. They hope Mary wakes in six days; while in Covenant former ally and her ex-lover Daniel tells Kitty that her enemy avaricious Ajani wants her on his team of cutthroats who always come back from temporary death unlike her band who might not return.



Last night in DC Chloe Mattison saw her fiancé having sex with her boss in her place. She left and had her first drink in five years. Now she awakens in the Wasteland’s Gallows Desert as the newest Arrival. The siblings take her back to camp as she mumbles hallucinations. Jack and Edgar chat that they came from different eras and locales after committing murders on earth, but Chloe seems the latest date yet. Being the oldest Arrivals, Jack and Kitty know the Wasteland is changing as Chloe fails to fit the “rules”.



The Arrivals is an exciting fantasy as the indigent population and the Arrivals (and readers) wonder why the newcomers come to this beastly hell. The cold (and at times hot) war between the heroic cutthroats and Ajani’s thug army is entertaining, but never enables the realm to come into focus outside the desert band. Still readers will enjoy visiting the Wasteland while wanting more tales located there; preferably a series of interrelated short stories starring different characters who would provide depth to this strange hellish realm.



Harriet Klausner

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