Da Vinci Code fans will be mildly intrigued.
A globe-trotting, perspective-shifting thriller filled with conspiracy theories and secret societies.
When the novel opens, the daughter of noted neurosurgeon Maurice Bergman is in a coma: She was poisoned at an archaeological dig site near Sidon, Lebanon, where Joseph, the father of Jesus, purportedly rests. Her father must take her to Rome in order to cure her. Once there, she’s given a drug that magically wakes her, and she’s able to explain to her father what occurred: She stumbled on the bones of St. Joseph, and an angel appeared to her in the guise of her dead mother to give her some kind of a fertility doll. Elsewhere, two men who were hired to fetch the statue of the Virgin are now explaining themselves not to the priest who hired them, but to a third party; the exact mechanics of their criminal endeavors remain murky throughout the novel. Also involved are an Austrian professor of Egyptian antiquities named Ernst Von Biden and an American investigative reporter, Marvin Challet, who seem to be representing the interests of the Catholic Church. Narrative focus switches between these groups from chapter to chapter, further complicating an already bewildering story. Inconsistencies and questions abound, even beside the credulity-straining Gnostic plot. For example, if this girl is so ill, why is she in her father’s house and not in the hospital? Even the best neurosurgeons don’t have access to the necessary level of machinery and medication at home. Furthermore, it’s difficult to swallow that a father fearing for his daughter’s life would automatically take the word of a stranger who calls to inform him about his daughter’s poisoning and who further insists that the treatment for this condition is available only in Rome. Even if that were true, logic dictates that it’s much easier to send medication than to bring a girl in a coma overseas. Indeed, none of the medical aspects of the novel can be looked at too closely. Punctuation errors, usually involving commas, pop up on nearly every page, as does an overreliance on ellipses to indicate speech patterns. Frequently, clunky phrasing and poor diction submerge the narrative—i.e., “laughed belly laughs.” The author also often ignores that old standby of writerly advice: Show, don’t tell. Sometimes, even the dialogue is painfully expository: “You must be weary having just arrived from Lebanon,” a man helpfully explains to his guests.
Da Vinci Code fans will be mildly intrigued.Pub Date: July 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-1451518559
Page Count: 262
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
In this intricate tale featuring an intense warrior, worldbuilding takes precedence over character development and a...
A human prince must defeat a powerful vampire warlock in this debut YA fantasy novel with sci-fi and horror elements.
Lord Taza, a vampire warlock and former emperor on planet Narlos, plans to transform all the inhabitants of planet Muiria into his vampire servants. Gifted the magical Staff of Adois by an evil goddess, Taza seems invincible—he has already transmuted many of the underground elven race of illanni—except for the “dire prophecy” of his downfall by human Prince Tarquin of Partha. After Taza’s assassin kills Tarquin’s cousin by mistake, wizard Celedant appears before the prince with an invitation to “take on a challenge worthy of your ancient Parthian blood.” Hungry for adventure, Tarquin leaves that very night to join the dwarven army at Celedant’s behest. After years of battling orcs alongside new dwarven friends, Tarquin rises through the ranks as a fierce, loyal soldier. Meanwhile, Celedant embarks on his own dangerous quest to obtain the Staff of Adaman, the only weapon that can defeat Taza’s Staff of Adois and maintain the equilibrium between good and evil. At the same time, a noble elven daughter, Morganna, foments rebellion among Taza’s illanni in the hope of joining the aboveground “children of light” Wood Elves. As his enemies amass, Taza uses the Staff of Adois to summon monsters from other dimensions. Luckily, Muiria has its own collection of magical beasts, including telepathic dragons and gods willing to interfere at opportune moments, resulting in creative battles. This ambitious novel is heavily inspired by The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones series. At its heart, the plot that Stephenson and Tedrick concoct is a simple hero’s journey, but a plethora of characters and subplots, as well as the detailed histories of multiple races—and planets—stretching back “thousands of years before the continents broke apart,” drowns the narrative. When the forces of good finally converge, battle sequences are carefully described with a few surprising twists. Yet the final chapter ends abruptly with many loose ends, suggesting further additions to this already sprawling story.
In this intricate tale featuring an intense warrior, worldbuilding takes precedence over character development and a coherent narrative.Pub Date: June 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61296-717-2
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An odd, nostalgic compilation, but a few poems about hospital patients see keenly into the condition of the individual body...
Wandzilak’s debut poetry collection spans a lifetime, musing on place, change, and mortality in light, occasional verse.
Built in the 1950s, the real-life East Deck Motel in Montauk, New York, was a mecca for beachgoers, surfers, and tourists of all stripes. But in 2015, its future was uncertain. In a sense, some of these poems, set at the motel, read as elegies—nostalgic celebrations of the seashore’s many moods. The title poem’s speaker reminisces about a night of love in the dunes, away from the crowd, and it’s gloomy with foreboding: “I could barely tell land from sea / I knew where I was, but not exactly.” With the lover’s “cold hand” in his, the speaker glimpses “the heart of a tear.” Other poems cast an eye over cultural high points, as in the longish poem “A Partial Autobiography.” The short, free-verse lines begin with oddity (“I was born with a remnant third nipple / I did not know what that meant for me”) but smooth out to more familiar touchstones: “I saw Yul Brynner play The King and I…. // I have seen the unicorns at the Cloisters //….I caught a wahoo in Turks and Caicos.” The oddity gathers and increases, however, in another cultural-event poem, this time on the occasion of seeing famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma in concert in 2013. The lilting cadence of “I ate elk with a runcible spoon!” proceeds to a playful but peculiar after-concert meal: “Later we fed Mr. Ma toasted farro / As he proceeded to eat my bone marrow!” Whimsy is one thing, but word-pairing for the sake of rhyme is another, as in this quatrain: “I have delivered fourteen lives / Each followed by fourteen placentas / Therein, I found elation upon this earth, / Unequaled to a dinner of lobster polenta.” The poet’s background as a surgeon also appears with a poetic nod to delivering bad news; in it, the narrator glances daily into a nearby cemetery, where a patient will soon be buried. A compilation of similarly medical-themed poems would be truly select.
An odd, nostalgic compilation, but a few poems about hospital patients see keenly into the condition of the individual body and soul.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5144-6727-5
Page Count: 54
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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