Readers may be left wanting to know more about the protagonist, but he leads a promising and undeniably engrossing story.
In Mann’s (Angel Landing, 2013) thriller, the second in a series, world peace may be attainable through a series of games both literal and metaphorical on a global scale.
Former U.S. intelligence agent and lawyer Mark Jamison has an idea on how to end the Great Game, the Britain-Russia struggle for domination in the Middle East and Central Asia. With the hope of achieving religious unity in the Middle East, he suggests to the Vatican a game or series of games as a way to handle negotiations. History shows that matters have long been settled with a chessboard, often the more uncommon and intricate Byzantine chess. Now, finding lost Byzantine treasure or assistance from the mysterious Game Master, whom Jamison might know, could hold the keys to the games’ successful outcome. But, as a flashback reveals, Jamison has been part of the “global chessboard” for more than 30 years, and he may know so many secrets that he’s put himself and wife, Sarah, in danger. Mann’s novel, like his debut featuring Jamison, has a rich historical backdrop. It’s even more prominent this time around, as the bulk of the story follows Jamison from 1980 to present day, meeting and befriending figures like Russian President Vladimir Putin and living through real-world events such as 9/11. There are also snippets of ancient history, including relevant details of the Byzantine Empire. But Mann adds suspense and intrigue to the plot as well: Jamison, traveling the world from East Africa to China, picks up enough info that, for example, knowing too much about a U.S. oil company gets him abducted and forcefully interrogated. Such dense history saturating the pages doesn’t leave much room for lighter fare, especially humor, which is all but nonexistent. Even particulars on Sarah or the couple’s two children, Adam and Adrienne, are limited, which is disappointing since Sarah had a more significant role in the preceding book. Nevertheless, Mann knows how to deliver an espionage story, and it’s clear that chess is tantamount to war strategizing and negotiation tactics. It’s likewise fitting that Jamison must rely on wit and reasoning over physical prowess.
Readers may be left wanting to know more about the protagonist, but he leads a promising and undeniably engrossing story.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1457534898
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Dog Ear
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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