A Canadian ocean liner becomes an island of safety during the earthquake that destroyed Yokohama in 1923. Former Yachting editor/nautical writer Robinson's first novel is based on actual events. Modeled after the author's real-life uncle, Captain Samuel Applebye is the calm eye of the storm in Yokohama Bay when the city is hit by an earthquake and subsequently ravaged by fire. Trapped pierside, Applebye's ship, the Oriental Monarch, fully provisioned for a Pacific crossing, becomes a refuge for the crowd that had assembled to wave off the departing passengers. Applebye takes on as many survivors as he can before the firestorm reaches the waterfront and threatens the ship. Using his formidable ship- handling skills, the captain muscles the liner away from the pier without the assistance of tugs, but the maneuver ties the Oriental Monarch to the freighter astern. Fires continue to threaten the coupled ships as pipelines spew fuels onto the waters of the bay and the closest help, a naval destroyer, is hours away. The captain also has other worries: His Swedish mistress, a miraculous survivor of the quake, is aboard with a compound fracture; radio communications have broken down; and the creepy functionary who's on the ship to evaluate the captain's performance for the owners prior to his promotion, is not pleased with Applebye's priority to save souls before ships. Playing minor roles are a tippling young ship's doctor, a rather cowardly officer, the captain's heroic steward, a fading movie star, and a couple of orphans. An old-fashioned story of modest heroics told in an old- fashioned Nevil Shute style that suits it perfectly.
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 1992
ISBN: 0-924486-21-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1992
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
As Tolkien had his Silmarillion, so Martin has this trilogy of foundational tales. They succeed on their own, but in...
Huzzah! Martin (The Ice Dragon, 2014, etc.) delivers just what fans have been waiting for: stirring tales of the founding of the Targaryen line.
Duncan—Dunk for short—has his hapless moments. He’s big, nearly gigantic, “hugely tall for his age, a shambling, shaggy, big-boned boy of sixteen or seventeen.” Uncertain of himself, clumsy, and alone in the world, he has every one of the makings of a hero, if only events will turn in that direction. They do, courtesy of a tiny boy who steals into the “hedge knight” Dunk’s life and eventually reveals a name to match that of Ser Duncan the Tall—an altogether better name, at that, than Duncan of Flea Bottom would have been. Egg, as the squire calls himself, has a strange light about him, as if he will be destined to go on to better things, as indeed he will. Reminiscent of a simpler Arthur Rackham, the illustrations capture that light, as they do the growing friendship between Dunk and Egg—think Manute Bol and Muggsy Bogues, if your knowledge of basketball matches your interest in fantasy. This being Martin, that friendship will not be without its fraught moments, its dangers and double crosses and knightly politics. There are plenty of goopily violent episodes as well, from jousts (“this time Lord Leo Tyrell aimed his point so expertly he ripped the Grey Lion’s helm cleanly off his head”) to medieval torture (“Egg…used the hat to fan away the flies. There were hundreds crawling on the dead men, and more drifting lazily through the still, hot air.”). Throughout, Martin delivers thoughtful foreshadowing of the themes and lineages that will populate his Ice and Fire series, in which Egg, it turns out, is much less fragile than he seems.
As Tolkien had his Silmarillion, so Martin has this trilogy of foundational tales. They succeed on their own, but in addition, they succeed in making fans want more—and with luck, Martin will oblige them with more of these early yarns.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53348-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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