A complex and involving space adventure with a strong emotional center.
A family’s earthbound trip from Uranus is beset with danger in Lace’s (Tears of Esperanza, 2012) sci-fi novel.
Chief Amma Janko runs Belvedere, a “thermal aerostat,” or airship, in the skies above Uranus. It serves as a base for energy company Magma, which harvests helium-3 for Earth’s fusion reactors. It’s also meant a lot of hard work and late nights away from her husband, Kurtic, a pilot; their 17-year-old daughter, Phoebe; and their 12-year-old son, Dag. As the novel opens, a catastrophe happens: Kurtic’s vessel is lost in an accident. Three months afterward, Dag is diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, although Dr. Rosenbaum believes that the condition doesn’t stem from Kurtic’s death but from a sabbatical home four years ago, when the boy became panicked by Earth’s vastness. Belvedere doesn’t have the resources to help him, necessitating another trip to Earth, this time on Magma Tanker 16. Along the way, problems arise with Dag’s medications, leading to scary episodes; Phoebe’s adolescent rebelliousness also causes difficulty, as does Magma’s bean-counting bureaucracy. But the worst trouble arises when they pick up a pair of very dangerous passengers from Titan who are devoted to “purity of body and mind from the adulterations of technology.” To save her family, Amma must draw on her faith in Kurtic’s love and her fierce maternal protectiveness. Lace provides a lived-in, believable world, skillfully integrating technical descriptions into the narrative: “The utilitarian tug...snapped on safety tethers, dialed up its variable-thrust rockets, and plucked us from the cradle extended from the dock.” As imaginatively conceived as the future society is, though, it’s still shown to retain sexist elements of the present: “we were women in a man’s world.” Overall, the characters are well-rounded with assets and weaknesses that contribute to the plot, which follows a strong overall trajectory toward Amma’s acceptance of “something miraculous.” However, some of the novel’s elements feel repetitious (such as the adjustments of Dag’s medication), which can slow the story’s momentum at times.
A complex and involving space adventure with a strong emotional center.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-79230-048-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2019
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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