A contemporary fantasy with a potentially fascinating setup that gets overwhelmed by prosaic writing and an unambitious use...
In a novel that brings together modern Vancouver and a nightmarish dream world, Downum (The Kingdoms of Dust, 2012, etc.) offers an unsettling adventure that relies on some familiar elements of urban fantasy.
Liz Drake, a 25-year-old graduate student, has what she believes are prophetic dreams. When her friend Blake Enderly has a strange accident and falls into a coma, Liz finds herself dreaming about Blake drowning, over and over again, in a dark and progressively more fantastical place. Spurred on by her dreams and guilt over past dreams that seemed to foretell the deaths of friends and family, Liz goes to Vancouver to rescue Blake and is embroiled in an unlikely world of artists who are also magicians, monsters, and angels. The squabbling and hunger for power that drives these factions against each other also connects them to the mysterious city of Carcosa, a place that can only be reached by magic or, for those with a talent for it, by dreams. As Liz attempts to bring Blake back to the waking world, her efforts combine with the others’ ongoing struggles to let dangerous bits of the dream world leak into reality. While the various elements of the world inside the novel are appealing, they often cross the line into predictable urban fantasy cliché and offer very little freshness or surprise to charm the reader. The intersecting storylines sometimes seem to lose track of each other, and any suspense or momentum that might turn the novel’s expected elements into enjoyable entertainment are obscured by a slack plot and overwrought description.
A contemporary fantasy with a potentially fascinating setup that gets overwhelmed by prosaic writing and an unambitious use of familiar tropes.Pub Date: May 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-78108-326-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Solaris
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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