Despite an interesting premise and rich detail, the novel struggles to create compelling characters whose personal goals...
A rendition of Frankenstein set in 2165, Roque’s debut boils over with rogue scientists and megalomaniacs scheming world domination.
New spy on the block Jia Chen is a Chinese physicist turned psychiatrist when she receives her big break. As the new liaison to Wang Robotics, Jia reports for her first day in the lab only to discover brilliant doctor Lanning Balcourt dying on the floor having been mauled by a lab animal. A surgical team executes Balcourt’s final wish to transplant his central nervous system into a host body. But when Balcourt awakens, Jia realizes this medical advance may not be for the benefit of mankind. Meanwhile, billionaire Augustus Wang garners fame and influence for his robotic designs, and his ambitions may forever alter the future of his beloved China. The novel’s setting is an example of the author’s fertile imagination; public transport is envisioned as tubes which scuttle commuters from one end of the country to the other. Yet the story struggles with pacing and character development. In a politically complex and multiethnic world, the author fills in background details in lengthy chunks that break up the novel’s flow; long explanations of Latin sayings and Chinese proverbs hinder the narrative flow. At times, dialogue meanders for over 20 lines, diluting readers’ sense of wonder. Academic exposition results in flat characters who simply move along in the landscape. As the protagonist, Jia should be a dynamic force within the prose, making decisions that impact the story and her own psyche; instead, she remains passive, relaying the action around her without the pathos required for an audience to invest in her battle. Ultimately, she is an enigma, often behaving in a manner hardly reflective of a government agent.
Despite an interesting premise and rich detail, the novel struggles to create compelling characters whose personal goals clearly motivate their actions.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0985163815
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Ilow Martin Roque
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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