Dan Strawn is the author of Isaac's Gun, Body of Work, and Breakfast at Blair's, Lame Bird's Legacy, and Black Wolf's Return. I am truly honored that having read the entire David Chronicles he posted this thoughtful review for the last volume, The Edge of Revolt:
A fitting end to David's story,March 23, 2015
In Book three of the David Chronicles, Uvi Poznansky continues to deliver first class character development with her first-person story telling. “The Edge of Revolt” follows King David into his old age. Uvi puts us there. We discover the cracks in the king's character, apparent to those in his court, yet denied by his regal vanity until at last the King sees the truth in the shattered lives of his progeny—his murderous and dishonorable sons, and Tamar, his ravished and dishonored daughter—all victims in David's eyes of his shortcomings.
As in the first two books in the trilogy, Uvi performs masterful story telling by mining between the lines of the biblical renditions. There she finds nuggets of what-if revelation about who this David of yore really was. Again, she puts us there, this time by sprinkling the narrative and dialogue with characterizations and idioms right out of the Twenty-First Century:
“Dad,” she has Solomon ask David, “are you cold?”
And from her narraative—“. . . I am a king, and a king I shall remain till my last breath.
“Out with the old, in with the new?”
Not to be outdone by the biblical poet, Uvi has her own ways of evoking emotion and eloquence:
“Back in the palace, where we used to walk on the softest of rugs, our soles have softened. Spoiled by luxury, so have our souls. To survive this winter in the wilderness, body and spirit must harden.
Can we do it? God knows.”
Or
“... everyone knows that when Joav comes too close, as if to hug you or whisper a dirty joke in your ear, the next thing you know is a stab under the fifth rib.”
Or
“To remind him of the words uttered by Abner, the general he stabbed to death years ago, I ask, 'should the sword devour forever?'”
How like David; how like Uvi in portraying him.
Enough. If you haven't read the first two books in the trilogy, put them by your nightstand. When you are finished with them, you won't be satisfied until you've turned the last page of “The Edge of Revolt.”
A fitting end to David's story,
By
This review is from: The Edge of Revolt (The David Chronicles Book 3) (Kindle Edition)
In Book three of the David Chronicles, Uvi Poznansky continues to deliver first class character development with her first-person story telling. “The Edge of Revolt” follows King David into his old age. Uvi puts us there. We discover the cracks in the king's character, apparent to those in his court, yet denied by his regal vanity until at last the King sees the truth in the shattered lives of his progeny—his murderous and dishonorable sons, and Tamar, his ravished and dishonored daughter—all victims in David's eyes of his shortcomings.As in the first two books in the trilogy, Uvi performs masterful story telling by mining between the lines of the biblical renditions. There she finds nuggets of what-if revelation about who this David of yore really was. Again, she puts us there, this time by sprinkling the narrative and dialogue with characterizations and idioms right out of the Twenty-First Century:
“Dad,” she has Solomon ask David, “are you cold?”
And from her narraative—“. . . I am a king, and a king I shall remain till my last breath.
“Out with the old, in with the new?”
Not to be outdone by the biblical poet, Uvi has her own ways of evoking emotion and eloquence:
“Back in the palace, where we used to walk on the softest of rugs, our soles have softened. Spoiled by luxury, so have our souls. To survive this winter in the wilderness, body and spirit must harden.
Can we do it? God knows.”
Or
“... everyone knows that when Joav comes too close, as if to hug you or whisper a dirty joke in your ear, the next thing you know is a stab under the fifth rib.”
Or
“To remind him of the words uttered by Abner, the general he stabbed to death years ago, I ask, 'should the sword devour forever?'”
How like David; how like Uvi in portraying him.
Enough. If you haven't read the first two books in the trilogy, put them by your nightstand. When you are finished with them, you won't be satisfied until you've turned the last page of “The Edge of Revolt.”
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