An engrossing, haunting story about making up for lost time.
In Boody’s supernatural debut, Thomas Jefferson returns from the dead to the 21st century.
Jack Arrowsmith recently lost his only son in a car accident and his wife to cancer. He yearns to reconnect with them in some way, so he returns to the place that holds his happiest family memories: Monticello. Thomas Jefferson lived and died at this self-designed Virginia estate, but his spirit never left, as Jack soon discovers. The former president appears to the ex-history teacher, inexplicably in corporeal form and still in every way the 18th-century statesman. Once Jack realizes that this is no reenactor, he contacts his son’s former girlfriend, Rachel, and insists she share this supernatural experience with him. The three form an unlikely bond as they tour America, introducing Jefferson to modernity, the evolution of race relations and the history he never knew. When Rachel and Jefferson become romantically involved, Jack realizes that their connection was forged more than 200 years ago: Jefferson has returned to resolve his past with Sally Hemings, the slave and lover who lives on in Rachel. Boody has written a wonderfully strange “what-if” story that demands a willing suspension of disbelief. However, he has tempered the fantastical elements of supernatural fiction so that most of the novel reads true. It’s not hard to imagine an adventure with the dead president; a ghost impregnating a living being, however, tests an already tenuous line. Yet Boody’s writing is so good, it’s easy to overlook this awkward bump. The author gives Jefferson a wholly authentic voice, with genuine dialogue that bears the stamp of a bygone era. Whatever the reader’s opinion of the third U.S. president, this Jefferson is delightfully quirky, flawed yet sympathetic and fascinating. Jack is a likable, reliable liaison between the past and present, but Rachel’s personality seems trapped in time. She is introduced as a modern thinker, yet she succumbs to a servant’s sensibilities to satisfy Jefferson; it’s unnerving to watch a once-outspoken woman lose sight of herself as she appeals to social conventions that no longer exist. Overall, though, Boody’s novel cleverly introduces history to today’s technology, politics and economy.
An engrossing, haunting story about making up for lost time.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2012
ISBN: 978-1456347543
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Bartleby, Scrivener & Co.
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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