Minimal action, but the focused setting and rounded characters will prime readers for further stories.
In the first installment of Giacomazzo’s (co-author: Swimming with Sharks, 2015) dystopian series set in the near future, a group resists a dictator who’s taken control of America.
It’s been over two decades since New York City resident Jamie Ryan was frontman for the popular glam-rock band Faust. Since that time, the country has come under the control of the authoritarian regime of Roger Cunningham, who’s known as “Emperor.” After winning a presidential election, Cunningham declared a state of emergency; members of his police force, The Cabal, now use psychic powers known as “psi”— capable of stripping “your spiritual life force, your psychic energy, the very aura that made an individual unique”—to make citizens docile. Jamie became a Cabal officer to support his pregnant wife, Angelique Denham. But after a fellow officer killed Angelique, Jamie and two other officers, Basile Perrinault and Kanoa Shinomura, defied Emperor and went on the run. Since then, they’ve been covertly killing other Cabal members; now, they’re planning to bring together other insurgent groups, including one called The Uprising, to stand against Emperor. Jamie also finds out that Ramira “Rosie” Diaz, the ex-girlfriend of late Faust bassist Jordan Barker, is now Emperor’s wife; Emperor’s soon-to-be-betrothed stepdaughter, Evanora Joy Diaz-Barker, is Jordan’s child. Giacomazzo wisely condenses the plot to its essentials; the number of characters is relatively small, and although Emperor has taken over the entire country, the narrative is centered in New York. The coarse language throughout and sharp instances of violence make the novel decidedly adult in tone. There’s a notable theme of family as Basile fights for loved ones he’s lost and Evanora acts as Jamie’s surrogate daughter. Moreover, the story adeptly tackles topical issues: Emperor’s “therapy,” for example, essentially aims to turn gay people straight. The plentiful dialogue is rife with slang, clipped sentences, and light insults. Nevertheless, very little happens in this first book, leaving readers to wait for particulars on such things as The Trials (tests for joining The Cabal) and Faust’s decision to disband.
Minimal action, but the focused setting and rounded characters will prime readers for further stories.Pub Date: March 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-980613-78-7
Page Count: 148
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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