A refreshingly unsentimental novel of family.
In Daughters’ debut fantasy, a struggling writer travels home to Texas and magically goes back in time to 1978, where she encounters her younger self.
Amy Daughters (who shares the author’s name) is a married mother of two in her mid-40s who writes about sports. She takes a flight on a private plane—piloted by her husband’s boss’s wife, Mary—from Ohio to her native Houston to meet with her siblings and her elderly dad to plan his estate. During the flight, she takes a nap, and when she wakes up, she finds that she’s been mysteriously transported back in time to 1978. Mary tells Amy that she’ll be visiting her family members, including her younger self, for just a day and a half, masquerading as a distant cousin in town for Thanksgiving. Bewildered and intrigued, Amy meets the younger versions of her dependable dad, Dick; her perfectionist mother, Sue; her older sister, Kim; and Star Wars-fan brother, Rick. Amy struggles to remain composed, but she finds herself profoundly moved by the experience. Most of all, she’s concerned about her 10-year-old self—an awkward, exuberant ball of energy with a bowl cut. She wants to tell the girl, who’s desperate for attention and validation, that everything will be fine in the end. Grandparents arrive, Thanksgiving dinner is served, and later on, a drunken party with neighbors goes awry. Daughters’ back-in-time family drama is full of razor-sharp descriptions of 1970s suburbia (“Her hair was carefully coiffed, and she wore a stunning burnt-orange pantsuit that, though absolutely horrible, somehow worked for her”), along with witty observations that range in tone from deadpan to ebullient. The well-thought-out premise allows the protagonist narrator to figure out how she can best improve her past and her own present. However, the author supplies a tremendous amount of detail, which slows the pace of the novel, and advances in the plot can feel too far apart at times. But overall, this is a memorable and appealingly authentic story about reconciling with one’s younger days.
A refreshingly unsentimental novel of family.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-63152-583-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
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