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 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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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