The closest parallels to this novel are movies like Inception and comic books featuring the Justice League of America.
Masterton (Fire Spirit, 2010, etc.) continues his Night Warriors series by tossing half-a-dozen untried Warriors at a nefarious 12th-century amputee monk.
Something is definitely wrong at Cleveland’s Griffin House Hotel. In Room 717, a disembodied voice predicts doom for charity worker Katie Kercheval. Police detective Walter Wisocky warns Rhodajane Berry, who’s come to town for her grandmother’s funeral, to report any odd doings in Room 309. Record promoter Lincoln Walker is attacked by a wraithlike figure who sets Room 104 afire. Rooms 237 and 239, where twin teen singers Kiera and Kieran Kaiser are staying, keep turning into an open field. The problem, cabdriver John Dauphin patiently explains, isn’t just with the hotel, it’s with these guests, all of whom are unwittingly sensitive to the dreams with which the walls have been infused ever since Cleveland Flats rapist/killer Gordon Veitch polluted them back in the 1930s. And the evil of these dreams goes back even further to the Cistercian monk Brother Albrecht, who’s been plotting dream-borne revenge and reunion with his beloved ever since his arms and legs were amputated in punishment for adultery 900 years ago. The first third of this installment (Night Wars, 2006, etc.) hints at these developments in some truly creepy ways. The rest—revealing their superhero destinies to the Griffin House guests (refashioned as An-Gryferai, Xyrena, Zebenjo’Yyx, Jekkalon and Jemexxa) and arming them to enter the dream world and do battle with Veitch, now calling himself Mago Verde, and Brother Albrecht—is more routine action stuff.
The closest parallels to this novel are movies like Inception and comic books featuring the Justice League of America.Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7278-6997-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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