The stakes have never been higher in Pack’s inventive epic.
Pack’s encore batch of riveting adventures about an interdimensional library system.
In Chronicles: The Library of Illumination (2014), readers met Johanna Charette and Jackson Roth, teens who co-curate a library where the subjects of books can enter the real world. In their first five adventures, the two faced increasingly complex situations that tested their inquisitiveness and loyalty to each other. This second volume reprints the fifth story, “Portals,” to reintroduce audiences to the 13 Libraries of Illumination set on different worlds, including Romantica, Scientico, Terroria, and Fantasia (Earth). The next entry, “The Overseers,” brings the teens to Lumina, the prime library realm, where Johanna’s mentor, Mal, is tested for a position in the College of Overseers, which runs the library system. Competing against Mal is Terroria’s horridly ambitious Nero 51 (introduced in “Portals”). “Myrddin’s Memoir,” a novella-length sequel, sees a book arrive on Johanna’s desk that proves to be the legendary wizard Merlin’s diary of spells. The wizard projects himself through the open volume and explains to Johanna that someone wants to steal his work and must be stopped at all costs. The collection ends with a preview of “Escape to Mysteriose,” the next story in Pack’s deftly expanding universe. As in the first Chronicles, the relationship between 18-year-old Johanna and slightly younger Jackson is grounded in light romance and sarcasm; when he suggests he’s one of a kind, she replies, “We can only hope.” Pack’s prose is lucid and tight, especially when explaining the libraries’ logistics: “This is a Library of Illumination. When the information kept here disappears, the contents of [citizens’] personally owned literature and documents will vanish.” Nero 51, meanwhile, is a master manipulator who lies as steadily as a heart beats; he also smells like “a chemical factory built in a field of rotting flesh.” Pack’s aptitude for spinning plots major (time travel) and minor (Pru Tellerence’s missing child) continues to make this a singularly engaging series.
The stakes have never been higher in Pack’s inventive epic.Pub Date: June 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-0991542857
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Artiqua Press
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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