In this sequel to Wade of Aquitaine (2008), two lovers continue their trips through antiquity in hopes of outwitting a mighty, manipulative force.
Wade Linwood of 21st-century Long Island is a potent synesthete. His senses are crisscrossed, but he can control the disorienting influx of sights, tastes, and smells to access the astral plane. Further, using an acupuncture point on his ankle, he can travel in time. Kreindia the Strange of ninth-century Amorium is an even more powerful synesthete. She and Wade, time-lost lovers, had found each other. Following the disastrous C.E. 814 battle at the Brennii Pass (in Wade of Aquitaine), Wade tries to return to the 21st century with Kreindia in tow. While he returns intact, she ends up in the quadriplegic body of Kreindel, a young woman who visits the same acupuncture clinic as Wade. He catches up with his love and her parents in the parking lot after an appointment. Faron Richter, Kreindel’s abusive stepfather, manages to brush Wade off despite his curative presence. Later, after Kreindel somehow disappears from the Richter home, Faron asks Wade where she might have gone. Though he suspects she’s escaped back in time, Wade remains silent. “Nothing to say to me?” begs Faron, whose foreboding name drips with villainy. Parris (Today You Write the Book, 2015, etc.) doubles down on everything that made the previous novel so rewarding. A devotion to ancient history allows the author to send his protagonists on individual, meticulously plotted adventures in time; Wade visits the sixth century to aid Theoderic the Great, while Kreindia lands in C.E. 820 to help her uncle, the imprisoned Michael of Amorium. Agile prose enlivens an already heady narrative, as in the line “Light illuminated a stripe of his face, making his darting eye appear to be mounted on the middle of a stick.” Parris doesn’t stop at depicting historical titans and epic battles. The quantum aspect of his series is just as thrilling; upon seeing the fabric of existence, Kreindia becomes “certain that this was the composition of both life and nonlife.” A dismal, uncertain finale propels readers toward the third installment. An exhilarating time-travel tale hits a bull’s-eye.
Pub Date: March 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-942183-05-1
Page Count: 396
Publisher: Blueberry Lane Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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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