Oft-told conspiracy theories combine to create a confusing story about saving the world.
A professor discovers a global conspiracy, and through an amazing series of coincidences helps save the world.
Kazra Moore’s student, Rick, reveals that his Uncle Yuccah, an elder of the Creek Nation, has important information regarding the Mayan 2012 prophecy–an obsession of Moore’s. The two fly to Georgia where Uncle Yuccah reveals that Kazra is a prophesied hero who must gather the keys of destiny and bring them back to perform a purification ceremony before 2012. He then explains that an evil angel, Zamariel, has been summoned by a secret society, the Order of Kingu, to obtain the keys of destiny, thereby destroying the world. Kazra travels from Georgia to Ireland to meet the key-keeper Odin. They battle the forces of darkness and escape with the key. Kazra then travels to Zimbabwe and meets a shaman, whose nephew and friend give him information and lead him to the next key of destiny. Kazra then goes to Asia, where he is led to the final key of destiny hidden in North Korea. After a narrow escape from the forces of darkness (now called the Leviathan Cult), Kazra returns to Georgia in time for the ceremony, a final showdown and ritual with the crystal keys. It is revealed that the real keys of destiny are not the crystals but human hearts, and with this knowledge the world is transformed. Throughout the novel, Kazra travels from one amazing coincidence to the next, encountering people who help him in his quest. The forward motion of the narrative is interspersed with lengthy explanations of conspiracy theories–the Mayan Calendar, the Olmecs, the colonization of Egypt by aliens and the origins of Atlantis, among many others. The plot often loses focus in the midst of this explication, dulling the suspense. While Kachisi’s ideas are interesting, his continuous use of coincidences and implausible plot points makes the story difficult to follow–there is little or no specificity of setting, and abrupt point of view and tense shifts. Ultimately, the book leaves the reader frustrated and lost.
Oft-told conspiracy theories combine to create a confusing story about saving the world.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 1936
ISBN: 978-0-595-50760-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
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