A beefy, diverting plot with a compelling protagonist to match.
Blum’s supernatural thriller features a bogus psychic who may hold the key to rescuing captive children and thwarting an imminent terrorist attack.
Ryan Gordon is making a decent living as the self-described “Psychic to the Stars.” It’s all for show, though; he’s just using intuition and info fed through an earpiece. So when CIA agents secure Ryan to a chair and demand he use his ability to stop a terrorist strike called the Flower Garden, he chalks it up to a hallucination; he is off his meds. Other issues surface, however, like former CIA assassin Seth Roemer, who knew Ryan as a boy, and Sen. Zachary Karbin, who’s sure Ryan can find his kidnapped daughter, Jackie. Ryan may actually be “super psychic” Kenny Vickers, whom the CIA had worked with years ago. He also could help save the Crystal Children, psychics the agency has imprisoned to use as weapons and impede the terrorists’ plan. Much of the author’s plot consists of past events, and Ryan spends a good deal of time denying his power or trying to recall apparently repressed memories. But Blum retains interest by gradually revealing vital details, like the initial mystery surrounding Ryan’s parents; his half brother, Arthur, who might not be as dead as he thought; and men who tried to take young Ryan and ended up in pieces. The supernatural elements are notable: most of the Crystal Children have telepathy, but Ryan has a few more things in his arsenal, including telekinesis and astral projection. Yet the plot outside the paranormal is equally worthy. The terrorist cell, for example, led by the Undertaker, is an undeniable threat, while a powerful someone orders the liquidation of the program, Starburst, which contains the Crystal Children and basically anyone who knows about them. There’s also a never-ending and immensely enjoyable shifting of alliances, as when a good guy or two, out of self-preservation, lend a hand to the baddies. The ending ties everything up in a nice, tight bow; it’s convincing but unfortunately marks the end for several curious characters, like Ryan’s stepmom/manager, Maria, who didn’t get enough of the spotlight.
A beefy, diverting plot with a compelling protagonist to match.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5114-5216-8
Page Count: 228
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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