by Thomas Claburn ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 14, 2015
An invigorating sci-fi mystery that’s so plugged in it may leave readers’ brains buzzing.
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An investigator uncovers a conspiracy to launch a viral attack in Claburn’s (Reflecting Fires, 2001) sci-fi thriller.
In 2050, Capt. Luis Cisco brings in “data speculator” Sam Crane to investigate the murder of scientist Dr. Xian Mako. Sam takes Mako’s peculiar rose-colored glasses to his friend Jacob to find out how much they might be worth. The case quickly becomes personal when Jacob is found dead and the glasses go missing. Sam looks further into Mako’s purchase of the specs and, because the scientist was poisoned with tetrodotoxin, he pays a visit to a restaurant that serves fugu. It seems, however, that some people don’t want the murder solved: Luis warns Sam off the case, and a mysterious, “sharply dressed man” follows Sam around. Before long, the feds are accusing the investigator of ties to terrorists. Meanwhile, a biological attack that causes blindness prompts another investigation. The novel is a chic fusion of the sci-fi and detective genres. For example, Sam is roughed up by FBI agents who forcibly hook him up to a device to read his mind; he also converses, via helmet mic, with a network agent who has Marilyn Monroe’s voice. Sam is a solid protagonist who’s always ready to employ a snappy line or his fists when the situation calls for it. But he’s also sympathetic: he’s unquestionably upset over Jacob’s death, for example, and regularly sees his comatose 5-year-old daughter, Fiona, who needs constant medical care. The story piles on the mysteries; at one point, for example, the affluent Harris Cayman, whom Sam has never met, bumps Fiona to the top of the list for a drug trial. Claburn also injects a notable satirical theme involving advertising—the network agent endlessly pitches products, depending on what Sam’s doing, and even ominously suggests life insurance. (Sam can only temporarily silence Marilyn by paying.) The narrative is self-contained, ultimately answering every question it raises, but it leaves the door open just a crack for a potential sequel.
An invigorating sci-fi mystery that’s so plugged in it may leave readers’ brains buzzing.Pub Date: March 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0986101601
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Lot 49 Labs, LLC
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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