An unevenly executed alien coverup novel, but one that dives deep into well-known conspiracy elements.
A former Army officer is haunted by the truth about UFOs in Doti’s debutSF novel.
In 1953, U.S. Army Capt. Ryan Caldwell is tasked by his friend and superior, Col. Frank Macklin, with an odd assignment: Macklin wants Caldwell to spy on the U.S. Air Force—a military branch that was split off from the Army just six years before, because he thinks that the Air Force is engaging in a massive coverup of an incident that happened in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947: “There was a cover story about a weather balloon, and some say we recovered a Russian secret weapon,” Macklin says. “But there is a wild story out there about space aliens.” Caldwell is initially stunned, but he soon becomes familiar with Project Blue Book, the cover-job that the CIA is orchestrating. Soon, he and his colleague, Lt. Stewie Henderson, are deep into the investigation, talking with supposed eyewitnesses who tell them that Air Force operatives not only recovered an alien spacecraft at Roswell, but also aliens. Caldwell meets a woman at a bar who gives him secret documentation about “the most incredible event of the twentieth century,” and eventually, Caldwell learns the shattering truth. Readers who enjoy UFO conspiracy theories will be eagerly turning pages as the author delves deeply into familiar lore. The fact that the existence of the real-life weather balloon is well-documented—and that other elements of the Roswell legend have been debunked—will likely be irrelevant to this book’s target audience. Indeed, they’ll find themselves well served by the complicated expositional scaffolding that Doti constructs over the course of this adventure, which features not little green men, but the short, gray aliens of conspiracy legend. That said, the prose can be clunky (“Caldwell would keep that known to himself that last detail”), and the dialogue is also awkward at times. However, some readers won’t mind that the storytelling takes a back seat to the ufological wonkery.
An unevenly executed alien coverup novel, but one that dives deep into well-known conspiracy elements.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1648040689
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Dorrance Pub Co
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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