A lengthy but mostly engrossing story of worldwide chaos and smaller-scale upheaval.
A U.S. Army officer at a subterranean military base is challenged by security breaches and potential refugees from aboveground disasters in Hodgson’s (By Strength and by Guile, 2016) thriller.
When higher-ups decide to move Lt. Col. Jon Frasier out of Delta Force, he earns a position at a secret underground facility called Omega 11. It’s part of Project Omega, the government’s plan to safeguard Americans in the event of nuclear war. During Frasier’s first day as ground-forces commander, he’s ambushed by a group of armed men, whom he fights off. Omega 11’s deputy commander was recently murdered, and after its commanding general suffers a suspicious heart attack, Frasier suspects that assassins have infiltrated the base, likely with inside help. He also learns that experts are predicting that an earthquake will cause California to fall into the sea, causing a tsunami that will devastate multiple countries. As Omega 11 and other sites prepare for refugees, Frasier leads the search for the assassins and moles running loose on his base. He receives assistance from Klavia, a Belgian shepherd that he helped recertify as a military working dog after its previous handler’s death in Afghanistan. One of its many skills is sniffing out explosives, which comes in handy. Hodgson effectively establishes the isolated facility, where people admire the realistic artificial sky and hear constant updates about increasingly dire global calamities, including terrorist activity and volcanoes on the verge of erupting. The characters are plentiful and distinctive, including some incompetent officers and others who are downright villainous. However, the author’s descriptions of women too often resort to superficial characteristics, such as a “pleasant chest,” “a smallish but very nice breast,” or “very feminine shaped butt and legs.” The depiction of Klavia, though, is exceptional; instances told from the dog’s perspective reveal its fierce loyalty and protectiveness; for example, it’s prone to frustration when a “female two legs” distracts its Alpha, Frasier. The ending doesn’t resolve everything, though, which leaves things open for a possible sequel.
A lengthy but mostly engrossing story of worldwide chaos and smaller-scale upheaval.Pub Date: July 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4575-5536-7
Page Count: 646
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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