The Veil of Snows - Hardcover

Grade 4-8. This sequel begins some years after A City in Winter (Viking, 1996) ended. The queen, now a young woman, worries over the fate of her missing husband and watches in dismay as her kingdom is distracted and corrupted by the foolish games and amusements of the vulgar Tookisheims, a large and powerful family of Usurper supporters. After his defeat, the Usurper disappeared into the Veil of Snows, the far distant and icy mountains, and now the queen's husband has disappeared while leading an army in the same area. All signs point to the Usurper's return, and this is in fact what happens. Once again, full-page color paintings illustrate pivotal moments in the story but with one jarring note?the text specifically describes how the queen's hair had darkened from its youthful golden to a dark chesnut color, but the illustrations still show her with shimmering golden hair. The Veil of Snows is unremittingly sad, as it is told decades after the events in question by a loyal soldier who loved and guarded the queen until her untimely death at the hands of enemy soldiers. However, it ends with a ray of hope, and a definite need for a sequel, when the narrator, as an old man, sees the queen's husband and son, now fully grown, riding together at the head of a vast army descending at last from the Veil of Snows. This poignant and sophisticated fairy tale will appeal to those who enjoyed A City in Winter, and will create demand for a sequel to complete the story.?Susan L. Rogers, Chestnut Hill Academy, PA
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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. (Fiction. 11-14) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.