People's lives change and the world changes with them, but change has always come slowly to Kingdom Mountain in northern Vermont in 1930. In this lively novel peopled with eccentric but believable and truly memorable characters change comes at Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson from every direction.

 

Jane's fiftieth birthday begins the story as she sets out on an ice-fishing expedition. As she crosses the frozen lake, on her sledge pulled by her team of oxen, those oxen named Ethan and General Ira Allen, the first change to her life comes from out of the sky.  That change is named Henry Satterfield, an aviator and somewhat of a rainmaker. His biplane is in trouble and he must attempt an emergency

A WIZARD WORTH MEETING

Many fantasy novels explain how a hero becomes a warrior, but very few delve into how that warrior first became a man. In THE NAME OF THE WIND by Patrick Rothfuss we have not only the beginning of a masterful Epic Fantasy but a coming-of-age story that transcends typical, genre- writings.

 

The book is subtitled “The Kingkiller Chronicles: Day One” and it is, we assume, the beginning of a trilogy or perhaps a series of books about the hero, Kvothe. It is the transcript of the first day Kvothe spends telling a famous biographer of his time (named, of all things, Chronicler) his life story. It quickly becomes apparent that the life story of this inn-owner who at the beginning of the book seems quite content to simply tend a bar, is far more complex and surprising than most lives in or out of Fantasy tend to be.