The Veil of Snows

By: Mark Helprin

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Hardcover | 1 November 1997

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After many years of peace, a queen prepares for the birth of her first child, only to be forced to confront impending danger, as the Usurper once again threatens her city, while her husband and his army vanish into the wilderness

Industry Reviews

The distinguished collaborators polish off a trilogy that began with Swan Lake (1989) and continued in A City in Winter (1996). Polish is the operative word; Helprin's unnamed narrator illuminates this dark, poignant story with characteristically refulgent prose, to which Van Allsburg's 13 color scenes of theatrically posed, golden-toned figures add sparkling elegance. A troubled peace follows the usurper's flight behind the remote Veil of Snows, and he soon returns to shatter the Queen's army, kill her husband (seemingly), and oppose her and her infant son with two million men. After a bitter siege, the Queen and her last 100,000 loyal followers escape the capital city and disperse into the mountains, where she is pursued and killed. Helprin injects a garishly satiric hue into this tale by filling it with corpulent, venial, opportunistic Tookisheims, a family whose government is headed by the Duke, a media mogul whose papers are relentlessly critical of the Queen, and Branco, who "makes the talking boxes that take the place of books." After 25 years of waiting beside the Veil, the narrator symbolically casts away the last of his hope - just as the Queen's husband and grown son march out of the' mists at the head of a new army. As with the previous books, the language, imagery, and wit are aimed at sophisticated sensibilities; Helprin's bottomless imagination and Van Allsburg's monumental visual style create a collaboration that glitters with star quality. (Kirkus Reviews)

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