E-book
A passage to Shambhala / by Jon Baird with Kevin Costner and Stephen Meyer ; illustrated by Rick Ross.
The golden age of adventure stories returns with this splendidly designed, action-packed, globe-trotting tale that combines the bravura storytelling of Kipling with the irresistible style of The Adventures of Tintin. Behind the staid public rooms of an old world gentlemen's club operates a more mysterious organization: The Explorers Guild, a clandestine group of adventurers who bravely journey to those places in which light gives way to shadow and reason is usurped by myth. The secrets they seek are hidden in mountain ranges and lost in deserts, buried in the ocean floor and lodged deep in polar ice. The aim of The Explorers Guild: to discover the mysteries that lie beyond the boundaries of the known world. Set against the backdrop of World War I, with Western Civilization on the edge of calamity, the first installment in The Explorers Guild series, A Passage to Shambhala, concerns the Guild's quest to find the golden city of Buddhist myth. The search will take them from the Polar North to the Mongolian deserts, through the underground canals of Asia to deep inside the Himalayas, before the fabled city finally divulges its secrets and the globe-spanning journey plays out to its startling conclusion. The Explorers Guild is a rare publishing opportunity, powered by the creative passion of one of the world's true storytelling masters, Kevin Costner.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781476727417
- ISBN: 1476727414
- Physical Description: 1 online resource.
- Publisher: New York : Atria Books, [2015].
- Copyright: ©2015
Content descriptions
| Source of Description Note: | Title from resource description page (Recorded Books, viewed September 08, 2015). |
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | World War, 1914-1918 > Fiction. Secret societies > Fiction. Explorers > Fiction. Adventure stories. Quests (Expeditions) > Fiction. Shambhala > Fiction. FICTION / General. Fiction. |
| Genre: | Electronic books. |
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Electronic resources
- Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2015 September #1
Baird and Costner team up with illustrator Ross (Urban Monsters, 2008, etc.) for a globe-trotting yarn of lost cities, secret societies, and privileged fisticuffs, backdropped by World War I. At center are the Ogdensâbrothers John and Arthur, sister Frances. Answering a gentlemanly challenge, Arthur braves the Arctic with his fellow dilettante explorers of the titular guild, and among the "Esquimaux," Arthur encounters a bright white light, a sunken city, and the onset of a severe wasting condition. News reaches Johnâa major under the British Viceroyâvia Frances' letter and convinces him to desert his post in Mesopotamia in order to help Arthur by collecting other sufferers of "the Complaint" for examination by the mysterious Mr. Sloane, a dead ringer for a former colleague of John's who had grievously wronged Fan, was grievously injured himselfâthen vanished completely. Ever at John's side are his dragoonsâhard drinking, expertly violent, and dr awn mainly from the British Isles. Their phonetically spelled accents underscore the emphasis on language, with page upon page filled with rumors, philosophies, and personal histories, in conversation or written correspondence, and threading through it all is a loquacious, omniscient narrator of the "gentle reader" variety. Dense, handsome prose undulates ever forward, textured by floridity and imaginationârival sects; talking islands; massive, uncanny machinery; Inuit Babylons; séances; lost knowledge. The politics also feel ancient, with good-guy Anglos traipsing the globe and embarrassing their enemies, while the women worry or are just strong enough to care for a sickly orphan. Pages split almost evenly between solid text and graphic storytelling, and yet the imagesâentirely sufficient in an action-figure sort of wayâare often used to do no more than deliver dialogue. Nevertheless, with its colorful cast, exotic locales, and intertwined fates, the b ook slowly addicts. A rousing throwback whose spinning plates never stop, even at the end (cue Volume 2). Copyright Kirkus 2015 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2015 June #1
Costner's day job as a multi-award-winning director, producer, and actor has taken him around the world, which got him interested in history and exploration. Thus he has joined with author and art director Baird to create a series of illustrated adventures about the Explorers Guild, a shadowy organization that hides behind a stuffy gentlemen's club. In this opener, with World War I already thundering, guild members are hunting for the fabled city of Buddhist cosmology called Shambhala.
[Page 69]. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. - LJ Express Reviews : LJ Express Reviews
Meet the Explorers Guild, a secret society of adventurers set on uncovering legendary mythical locations across the globe. The first installment of this new adventure series takes place during World War I, with the Guild hunting for the infamous lost golden Buddhist city of Shambhala. The cast of characters is immense, and they are at times hard to keep track of as they seek out the mysterious city. Wandering from locale to locale, the explorers blaze a trail from the Asian deserts to the North Pole. The book's format is highly stylized, with antiqued pages and intricate artwork by Ross; it is somewhat like a graphic novel but significantly more prose. Verdict Don't be mistaken by the illustrations: this volume is not for children or casual readers. Baird (Day Job; Songs from Nowhere Near the Heart) and Academy Awardâwinning actor/director Costner were inspired by 19th-century adventure literature, and their prose is dense, in the style of Rudyard Kipling, Jules Verne, and Robert Louis Stevenson. In the spirit of Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin, this title is recommended for literary fiction and adventure fiction readers. [See Prepub Alert, 5/4/15.]âCarolann Curry, Mercer Univ. Lib., Macon, GA (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
