Fans of contemporary horror-thrillers will be deeply satisfied by this latest Nightscape outing.
A South Pacific thriller that mixes a good deal of Robert Louis Stevenson with a dash of H.P. Lovecraft.
Edwards’ (Nightscape: Cynopolis, 2015, etc.) third Nightscape novel opens with a desperate emergency—and it rarely slows down after that. Six passengers are enjoying a pleasure cruise aboard a luxury 58-foot cruising yacht near the Solomon Islands when sudden disaster strikes: their anchor comes loose during the night and their yacht strikes a coral reef, fatally gashing the hull. Everyone is forced to abandon ship and swim in the darkness to the nearest atoll. The six castaways are 26-year-old Atlanta Journal-Constitution journalist Ridge Dantley; his fiancee, Mira; his old friend and former schoolmate at Choate, Aaron; U.S. Sen. Bryant Neeland of Georgia; his chief of staff, Kenny; and Kenny’s latest “flirtation,” Boston Brahmin Paige. They all (barely) make it to the atoll—except for Aaron, who disappears into the night. A grieving Ridge decides to swim to a much bigger island in the distance in hopes of finding a settlement or some fresh water. Instead, he finds a nightmare: an outlaw camp run by a sadistic tyrant named Tarrant who forces his own men, the native Melanesians, and now Ridge, to mine for gold. But from Ridge, he wants one other task: editing a strange work of philosophy that Tarrant’s been writing. Edwards very skillfully intersperses tense action scenes among engaging elaborations of his characters—most interestingly, the aforementioned disillusioned senator, who thinks “with growing vehemence” about the decay of the American dream. The prose can be melodramatic at times, as in this line, during the boating mishap: “From his perspective, high above the water, his friends appeared the hapless victims of some vast Manichean struggle.” However, the pacing is pitch-perfect throughout, and the supernatural elements that reveal themselves later on in the story are smoothly integrated. Also, new readers need not read the earlier volumes in the series to enjoy this one.
Fans of contemporary horror-thrillers will be deeply satisfied by this latest Nightscape outing.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9897487-4-2
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Imperiad Entertainment
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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