If this book sounds appealing, then read Mind Storm first to avoid at least some of the confusion.
Continuation of Mind Storm (2011) as "psions," mutants with psychic powers, battle it out over the fate of humanity.
Two hundred fifty years ago, nuclear war destroyed Earth and via mutation created the psions, whose weakness is that the more powerful they are and the more they use their powers, the sooner they die. Much of the time it's far from clear what's going on if you haven't read the previous book, or perhaps even if you have, but the planet's two most powerful psions are on opposite sides. Nathan Serca represents the powerful and privileged elite, whose ambition is to escape to Mars. His renegade eldest son, Lucas, intends to stop Nathan and instead reclaim the Earth. Lucas is following the instructions of a four-year-old precognitive relative, Aisling, who died during the war after leaving her plans in encrypted computer files. Lucas' team consists of liberated Strykers, psions enslaved by the government by means of kill switches implanted in their brains. That's really all you need to know. The action is nonstop, insanely violent and mostly lethal, like X-Men on steroids. The biggest problem with all this is that the two Sercas are both homicidal psychopaths, with one slightly less homicidally psychopathic than the other; compassion's in very short supply and mercy isn't even in the dictionary: If somebody gets in your way you kill them, agonizingly and brutally or not so agonizingly and brutally. It's a tribute to Ruiz's skill that, somehow, when a winner finally emerges, it's the one you've been rooting for.
If this book sounds appealing, then read Mind Storm first to avoid at least some of the confusion.Pub Date: June 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-68115-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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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