by Brian Lumley ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2001
Only those fully empowered with eidetic recall need apply.
Thirteenth gigavolume in Lumley’s megaloid vampire epic, and the last of a trilogy (Necroscope: Invaders, 1999; Necroscope: Defilers, 2000).
Lumley’s series swells past mere human ability to keep its metamorphic storywarp on the mindscreen. Nor will a crossdimensional multimap, however wide-angled to include however many astral planes touched on by Lumley, bring sense to the abstract hopscotch of the epic’s general plan. But . . . to sum up: The original Necroscope and top vampire killer, Harry Keogh, dies (no big deal) and splits into several beings, including bits of the evil Lord Malinari (who has his own independent counterpart as well). Harry’s spot in Britain’s top-secret E-Branch (“E” for ESP) has been taken over by young new Necroscope Jake Cutter, who traces Malinari to Australia and destroys his fungi garden (which was spawning spores to enslave all humanity), although The Mind escapes. Lord Malinari and Lady Vavara (that beautiful hag with jewel-green eyes who loves wild honey and wolf hearts) now take up plans to bring humanity into lasting bloodlust and darkness forever, enjoining it to the predawn Vampire World of Starside/Sunside and using Manhattan’s greatest building as its aerie, after lacquering it black inside and out to block out sunlight. (Let us skip over the important Möbius Continuum as a means of metaphysical teleportation.) And we learn Jake’s secret: his mind bears vampire intelligence. Now on the run, Malinari and Vavara take over a gigantic ultramodern pleasure cruiser and soon infect its entire population with fear of sunlight. Should E-Branch sink this ship? Its very lifeboats are worth millions. Later, mentalist Ben Trask takes over much of the novel and, with a task force of E-Branch avengers, pursues Malinari, Vavara, and a host of girls from the vampirized cruise ship. Will Jake’s secret vampire intelligence become a power against Malinari? The climax feels more Schwarzeneggerian than occult.
Only those fully empowered with eidetic recall need apply.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-87923-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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