First of a new series from the author of The Dolphins of Pern (1994), etc. When the Earth is attacked by humanoid, heavy-planet alien Catteni, many of its people are taken to distant worlds and enslaved. Kristin Bjornsen manages to escape and live free in the jungle, until one day she sees the Catteni hunting down one of their own kind. On impulse, Kris helps the aristocratic Zainal, then foolishly allows them both to be recaptured. Soon Kris and Zainal, along with hundreds of other prisoners, both human and alien, are dumped with only minimal survival gear on yet another planet. According to Zainal, this is how the Catteni colonize new worlds. This time, however, ex-marine sergeant Chuck Mitford takes charge of the motley group, swiftly organizing the various races into survival teams depending on their abilities. Despite initial hostility, Zainal wins the respect of the humans, revealing that the Catteni themselves are but servants of still more powerful aliens. But their new planet isn't altogether uninhabited—it's a farm world run by machines on behalf of unknown aliens. The colonists lose no time in disassembling the machines and rebuilding them into all sorts of useful devices, while they make plans to capture the alien mother ship when it returns to collect the planet's harvest. Meanwhile, Kris and Zainal become lovers. And then.... After that contrived opening, the narrative hits an admirable groove—only to terminate rudely and abruptly, without even a token conclusion. Yes, readers, you've been suckered again.
Pub Date: May 24, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14062-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
Michaels’s fan base isn’t likely to be increased by this improbable distaff pastiche of Mission: Impossible.
The Sisterhood takes on yet another evildoer in their endless quest to right wrongs against unjustly maligned women.
Architect Isabelle Flanders’s life was destroyed when her coldly ambitious employee Rosemary Hershey framed her for vehicular manslaughter and stole her ideas and her fiancé Bobby Harcourt. Now the Sisterhood (The Jury, 2005, etc.) has devised a diabolical plan to help her get revenge and recover her reputation. Wealthy Sisterhood stalwart Myra Rutledge installs Isabelle in a luxurious office and buys a Virginia property to set up a bogus contest in which local architects will be invited to design a sumptuous horse farm, planning to make Isabelle and Rosemary the only finalists. Meanwhile, Bobby, long fed up with Rosemary’s greed, sues for divorce, planning to start his own architectural firm. Rosemary, who’s receiving anonymous letters reminding her that it was she and not innocent Isabelle who ran down and killed a family, is sinking into a funk as the Sisterhood increases the pressure. A rainy night in a cemetery, bogus snakes and a broken rope finally get Rosemary to confess and leave the Sisterhood ready to plot their next adventure.
Michaels’s fan base isn’t likely to be increased by this improbable distaff pastiche of Mission: Impossible.Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7278-6349-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
Sure to be a bestseller, but the guy’s phoning it in.
A lukewarm would-be potboiler of uninvolving intrigue about a kooky quartet of conspiracy theorists—one by the name of “Oliver Stone”—who witness the murder of a federal agent.
Almost 8,000 Americans have died in attacks on U.S. soil. Rocket-propelled grenades have pierced the White House, there’s been another prison fiasco in Afghanistan, a dozen soldiers are dying every day and the war has opened a new front on the Syrian border. Thus the author’s bleak imagining of the near future. Throughout, Baldacci (Hour Game, 2004, etc.) drops reliable twists, revealing the federal agent murder to be—surprise—a minuscule piece of a much bigger plot involving snipers, nukes, a presidential kidnapping and an even gloomier vision of the future. Baldacci is not a particularly graceful writer, e.g., “Like all Secret Service agents, his suits were designed a little big in the chest, to disguise the bulge of the weapon.” Worse is the author’s chronic inability to draw convincing characters. Scooby-Doo had villains more complicated than these; distinctive quirks of the characters, such as one wearing 19th-century clothing, make them only mildly interesting. Baldacci himself seems only partly engaged in the task here. He writes as if he imagines his typical reader to be a business traveler staring down a long layover.
Sure to be a bestseller, but the guy’s phoning it in.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2005
ISBN: 0-446-57738-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
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