An exciting and unpredictable tale of espionage and adventure in the early 20th century.
A debut novel offers political intrigue set within the perilous complexity of the Russian Revolution.
Jeremy Clarke has just returned from France, where he fought as an American soldier in World War I. The son of a wealthy steel magnate, Jeremy now plans to join the family business under the tutelage of his formidable sister, Elizabeth. His plans are temporarily thwarted, however, when a representative from the State Department, Charles Appleton, suddenly arrives unannounced and reveals that Jeremy and Elizabeth’s father, who had vanished in Russia, is still alive. He asks Jeremy to lead a military team—really a small army—into Russia to rescue him and to secure a “package,” the contents of which remain, for the moment, mysterious. Appleton himself is a nebulous fellow, described as a “ghost” with virtually no government file. Jeremy accepts the assignment, and Elizabeth is put in charge of its logistics, which include procuring firearms. While crossing through Romania, Jeremy is taken prisoner and shot while escaping, forcing Elizabeth to take over as commander of the mission. All the while, Russian intelligence tracks the team’s every move, as interested in the package as it is in Elizabeth’s father. Cousins masterfully keeps the story moving at a fast clip, interspersing action at every turn. The inner machinations of the Russian Revolution are numbingly convoluted, and Cousins does a credible job navigating its infinite nuances. The story is driven by the relentless force of Elizabeth’s character, whose motto is: “Observe. Learn. Dominate.” In fact, her bravery—she is only 26 years old— in combat strains credulity: “The rat-tat-tat of the machine gun continued to ring in her ears as she became aware of what was happening around her. She had a job to do and she couldn’t do it lying on her back. She pulled herself up and got back to the gun belt.” But Cousins artfully presents the implausible as easy to digest, a skill that is the hallmark of this relentless thriller. Strictly speaking, this is almost too fantastic a tale to carry the label historical novel, but the author’s research of the period, and of Russia in particular, remains impressive.
An exciting and unpredictable tale of espionage and adventure in the early 20th century.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9948242-1-9
Page Count: 494
Publisher: Corrxan Inc.
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2016
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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