A heroic cosmic odyssey that—for all the technology—remains textured with the stuff of legend, stirring and ultimately...
A space explorer—investigating a vanished expedition to colonize a faraway world—recalls an epic life filled with adventures, loss, and peril as he faces a potential reunion with a former love.
Debut author Cahill spins a wide-roaming galactic tale with mythic overtones here. The novel’s first-person narrator is big, stout-hearted Oren Siris of a moon mining colony called Verygone. In spacegoing humanity’s far future (or remote past?), Oren belongs to the “Fellowship,” a vast unity of settled worlds—there’s no mention of intelligent alien life—ever pushing outward and exploring, much like the Star Trek franchise’s Federation. In trying to establish an outpost on the promising but remote world of Eaiph, a vanguard of “Architects” has seemingly disappeared—among them is Saiara Tumon Yta, a Fellowship ensign who was Oren’s great love. Because people can live millennia with advanced Fellowship technology and cryonic stasis, Oren hopes to reunite with Saiara, even after 627 years, as his own follow-up ship nears the planet. Meanwhile, the narrative recounts Oren’s earlier space exploits as a rookie cadet facing dangers and wonders, ranging from a derelict starship’s artificial intelligence (aka the “shipheart”) turning malignant to a rococo culture featuring a charming, penniless aristocrat leading visitors through a sort of carnival masquerade drawn from the dominant religion. At last on the semibarbaric Eaiph, Oren encounters old and new threats while trying to remain true to the Fellowship’s idealistic goals and his own dreams. The author’s rich vocabulary weaves spells with hard sci-fi threads blended neatly with loanwords and arcane and antique jargon (“amanuensis,” “pausha,” “biologician”). It is a mixture that sometimes touches the sublime in sci-fi lyricism: “We had reached Eaiph, one of the most fertile worlds ever discovered, a glassy blue cauldron of life, waiting for those to live it. In three more galactic weeks, the little waterstone would arrive to meet us on its passage around Soth Ra.” One can forgive Cahill’s springing the old Nightmare on Elm Street trick a few times too many, as tough spots and cliffhangers turn out to be dreams (yet sometimes, more than dreams). The manner in which the author resolves the strands should pinch the heartstrings of readers accustomed to programmed uplift.
A heroic cosmic odyssey that—for all the technology—remains textured with the stuff of legend, stirring and ultimately melancholy.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-973326-65-6
Page Count: 490
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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