A solid second entry, with more on the way.
A highly intelligent woman with superhuman powers and extensive combat training is kidnapped in order to help a team of terrorists find the world’s greatest treasure in the sequel to Hidden 12, Intelligence Required (2014).
Haven, considered a Cell 12, hits the ground running. She wakes up sensing she’s about to be kidnapped, then runs from terrorists with her family and protector. Once she loses her telepathic vision, she uses her “red heat vision” to see there is no hope. To ensure her family’s safety, she allows herself to be kidnapped. Haven is taken by Habib, a man she previously helped escape from jail, but he now has implanted a bomb inside of her and stolen one of her eggs for artificial insemination. He needs Haven’s help—and her family’s—to fulfill the prophecy that his family will be rich beyond their wildest dreams. More action ensues when Haven’s parents, Ben and Kristyn—both Cell 11—come to her aid with members of the Sector army. The group travels to India to translate the stones of the prophecy and, following the stones’ guidance, ends up in Alaska. More supernatural characters are introduced to either help or hinder Haven and Habib’s quest. During all this, Haven maintains her devotion to family, though she can’t decide from among three men which she loves. Reading Hidden 12 is more or less a prerequisite because no explanation is given as to who or what some of the characters are and how they came to be. “They want me to be a nanny for their GEMS babies,” Haven’s nanny says in an opening scene with no further explanation of GEMS. The structure of the militaristic government, reasons why relationships are forbidden, and what exactly a “cell” is are also never fully detailed. The sometimes-confusing jumps between first-person narrations also make reading difficult. Still, Haven’s wild ride is a fast, entertaining read with plenty of ingenious weaponry, heart-pounding chases, and fantastical imagery that all leave the door open for the third installment.
A solid second entry, with more on the way.Pub Date: July 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-48813-3
Page Count: 364
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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