Starr doesn’t let plot development or characterization impede the flow of violence or improbable twists and turns in this...
Jason Starr continues the saga of regular-guy-turned-werewolf that he began with The Pack (2011).
Women find Simon Burns irresistible. So much so that they practically yank his pants off while he’s out with his young son to enjoy a day in the park. But Simon’s conversion from an ordinary guy to a sexually magnetic stay-at-home dad with strange physical powers isn’t a coincidence. It all began when he turned into an urban werewolf courtesy of Michael, the strange German heir to a beer fortune. Simon’s wife, Alison, understands only that her husband suffers from some type of psychological disorder that makes him think he’s a werewolf, but Simon knows the truth, and he’s hidden it from her well. Or at least he’s tried, because lately his powers have been growing, and he’s becoming stronger, faster and more dangerous every day. As Alison grows more and more puzzled about her marriage and Simon’s weird behavior, Simon explores the werewolf side of his personality and discovers he can run faster and longer than ever before and sense smells like never before, all while experiencing amazing changes to his body. But Simon is worried about his family’s safety. He has seen firsthand the brutal appetite of werewolves in a feeding frenzy and worries that his own role in a police investigation led by a sexy female detective will soon bring much unwanted notice to him and the members of his pack. Not to mention that his own wife displays the critical judgment skills of a teenage girl who goes down in the basement knowing that there might be a guy with a hockey mask and a chainsaw waiting. Starr’s book is long on gore and rife with the kind of sexual thinking generally attributable to nerdy but hopeful 15-year-old boys, and none of Starr’s characters are especially redeeming, but there’s a goofy kind of fun to the writing.
Starr doesn’t let plot development or characterization impede the flow of violence or improbable twists and turns in this tale about a guy who parents by allowing his 3-year-old to hang out with people-eating werewolves.Pub Date: June 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-55-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.
After 1,000 years of peace, whispers that “the Nameless One will return” ignite the spark that sets the world order aflame.
No, the Nameless One is not a new nickname for Voldemort. Here, evil takes the shape of fire-breathing dragons—beasts that feed off chaos and imbalance—set on destroying humankind. The leader of these creatures, the Nameless One, has been trapped in the Abyss for ages after having been severely wounded by the sword Ascalon wielded by Galian Berethnet. These events brought about the current order: Virtudom, the kingdom set up by Berethnet, is a pious society that considers all dragons evil. In the East, dragons are worshiped as gods—but not the fire-breathing type. These dragons channel the power of water and are said to be born of stars. They forge a connection with humans by taking riders. In the South, an entirely different way of thinking exists. There, a society of female mages called the Priory worships the Mother. They don’t believe that the Berethnet line, continued by generations of queens, is the sacred key to keeping the Nameless One at bay. This means he could return—and soon. “Do you not see? It is a cycle.” The one thing uniting all corners of the world is fear. Representatives of each belief system—Queen Sabran the Ninth of Virtudom, hopeful dragon rider Tané of the East, and Ead Duryan, mage of the Priory from the South—are linked by the common goal of keeping the Nameless One trapped at any cost. This world of female warriors and leaders feels natural, and while there is a “chosen one” aspect to the tale, it’s far from the main point. Shannon’s depth of imagination and worldbuilding are impressive, as this 800-pager is filled not only with legend, but also with satisfying twists that turn legend on its head. Shannon isn’t new to this game of complex storytelling. Her Bone Season novels (The Song Rising, 2017, etc.) navigate a multilayered society of clairvoyants. Here, Shannon chooses a more traditional view of magic, where light fights against dark, earth against sky, and fire against water. Through these classic pairings, an entirely fresh and addicting tale is born. Shannon may favor detailed explication over keeping a steady pace, but the epic converging of plotlines at the end is enough to forgive.
A celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63557-029-8
Page Count: 848
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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