A fabulous story packed with detail that explores both the positive and damning effects of extreme faith in a way that feels...
In Garcia’s debut, the lives of two young girls in early 20th-century Madrid, N.M., are threatened when the combative powers of witchcraft and Catholic mysticism fight for supremacy with devastating consequences.
Garcia’s novel weaves between the lives of two very different young ladies: Salia, a witch raised on the outskirts of town by a selfish mother and an uncaring grandmother; and Marcelina, a Catholic girl plagued by tragedy and death. However different their upbringings and backgrounds, the two girls come together at strategic times in their lives to find solace and balance in one another after the damage they’ve suffered because of their faith. The first time they unite, it’s because Marcelina’s family has been cursed by a centuries-old witch who has risen from the ground and thirsts for blood. The action only ramps up from there. Through family deaths, personal suffering and even a few romantic encounters, the intertwining tales of Marcelina and Salia become incredibly riveting, even moving. The characters are both born into worlds that don’t understand them and, despite mistakes along the way, there is much they both need and learn from one another. With a killer twist near the end and supernatural folklore that feels grounded in reality, Garcia’s title is fluid and well-paced, never taking the audience’s attention for granted. The world the author creates is rich, lush and scary; supernatural fans will certainly appreciate the copious worldbuilding that went into this novel. There’s also a fair amount of gore in the book; death is often described in the most harrowing fashion possible. Though the book drags in places, once the dominoes start falling in the book’s final stages, readers won’t be able to put it down—especially after one character’s very disturbing return.
A fabulous story packed with detail that explores both the positive and damning effects of extreme faith in a way that feels both fresh and authentic.Pub Date: April 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-1466429796
Page Count: 368
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fable about the consolatory and strengthening powers of religion flounders about somewhere inside this unconventional coming-of-age tale, which was shortlisted for Canada’s Governor General’s Award. The story is told in retrospect by Piscine Molitor Patel (named for a swimming pool, thereafter fortuitously nicknamed “Pi”), years after he was shipwrecked when his parents, who owned a zoo in India, were attempting to emigrate, with their menagerie, to Canada. During 227 days at sea spent in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger (mostly with the latter, which had efficiently slaughtered its fellow beasts), Pi found serenity and courage in his faith: a frequently reiterated amalgam of Muslim, Hindu, and Christian beliefs. The story of his later life, education, and mission rounds out, but does not improve upon, the alternately suspenseful and whimsical account of Pi’s ordeal at sea—which offers the best reason for reading this otherwise preachy and somewhat redundant story of his Life.
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-15-100811-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An improvement over The Dead Zone, with King returning to his most tried-and-true blueprint. As in The Shining, the psi-carrier is a child, an eight-year-old girl named Charlie; but instead of foresight or hindsight, Charlie has firestarting powers. She looks and a thing pops into flame—a teddy bear, a nasty man's shoes, or (by novel's end) steel walls, whole houses, and stables and crowds of government villains. Charlie's parents Vicky and Andy were once college guinea pigs for drug experiments by The Shop, a part of the supersecret Department of Scientific Intelligence, and were given a hyperpowerful hallucinogen which affected their chromosomes and left each with strange powers of mental transference and telekinesis. When Vicky and Andy married, their genes produced Charlie and her wild talent for pyrokinesis: even as a baby in her crib, Charlie would start fires when upset and, later on, once set her mother's hands on fire. So Andy is trying to teach Charlie how to keep her volatile emotions in check. But when one day he comes home to find Vicky gruesomely dead in the ironing-board-closet, murdered by The Shop (all the experimental guinea pigs are being eliminated), Andy goes into hiding with Charlie in Manhattan and the Vermont backwoods—and Charlie uses her powers to set the bad men on fire and blow up their cars. They're soon captured, however, by Rainbird, a one-eyed giant Indian with a melted face—and father and daughter, separated, spend months being tested in The Shop. Then Andy engineers their escape, but when Andy is shot by Rainbird, Charlie turns loose her atomic eyes on the big compound. . . . Dumb, very, and still a far cry from the excitement of The Shining or Salem's Lot—but King keeps the story moving with his lively fire-gimmick and fewer pages of cotton padding than in his recent, sluggish efforts. The built-in readership will not be disappointed.
Pub Date: Sept. 29, 1980
ISBN: 0451167805
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1980
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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