Alternative-history vampire science/fantasy by Stableford (The Third Millennium, 1985), a novelist with degrees in biology and sociology. Stableford details the sociobiology of vampires with a fineness that puts top vampirist Anne Rice in the shade as a cultural chronicler. His story largely is laid three centuries ago in England when the civilized world, led out of the Dark Ages by the rise of vampires, is governed by an aristocracy of vampires who rule by fear. Vampires seemingly cannot love or feel pain; females are barren, and males have a low sex drive. They feed on—and draw their number from—common men. But how do the vampires reproduce from the commoners? This question haunts Edmund Cordery, courtier to Richard the Lion-Hearted (a vampire, of course), who has just devised a microscope that reveals the small world of microbes that he thinks can help overthrow vampire rule if the spermatic base of vampirism can be found. When Edmund kills a lady vampire by purposefully inoculating himself with the black plague before she drinks his blood, his son Neil—a budding social revolutionary- -flees England, seeking the microbial code. Neil knows vampires don't pass on their ``emortality'' by magic—it's something to do with their blood. He joins a pirate band and goes to Africa, fabled homeland of vampires, and in the wonderfully described Uruba tribe finds himself in vampire paradise where the biology of vampirism is at last revealed. An asteroid ages ago struck here, carrying on it ``the breath of life''—emortality microbes, which are now carried in vampire semen, which in turn must be applied to an open wound to be effective.... After the huge vampire battle of the Spanish Armada, the story leaps three centuries ahead for a brief look into modern worldwide emortality as analyzed by microbiologist Michael Southerne, who has Cordery's Syndrome (he must die, never emortal, because his blood resists vampire microbes). Terrific vampire fiction, with well-humanized puppet characters.
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1991
ISBN: 0-88184-742-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1991
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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