An adroitly conceived series opener that’s tailored to action fans.
In this middle-grade novel, artificially intelligent teddy bears protect the son of a kidnapped scientist.
Dr. Peter Barnes is being held against his will in a secret lab beneath the Arctic tundra. His kidnappers—referred to as “government agents”—know that he’s mathematically proven the existence of other dimensions besides our own. They want him to create a portal to one of those dimensions, and they’re willing to harm Peter’s 10-year-old son, Timmy, if he doesn’t cooperate. Timmy, whose mother died four years ago, is an excellent student—in large part because his and his father’s frequent moves have kept him from having a social life. Peter often takes work-related trips, leaving Timmy with a nanny. He’s never been gone for a month before, however, and the new nanny, Ms. Gertrude, isn’t too friendly. In captivity, Peter creates a blue-lit portal that releases hundreds of monstrous, shadowy beings, led by an imposing entity named Total Dark, who wants to rule our dimension. Total Dark, who’s also capable of absorbing other objects and using them as weapons, detects that Peter has a son. It sends its minions after Timmy in order to coerce the doctor into opening an even larger portal so that thousands more shadows may cross over. In response, Peter remotely activates Bear Company—five robotic teddy bears in his house, each programmed with a different specialty to protect Timmy. For his debut novel, Alexander launches a smart, action-oriented middle-grade series that’s designed to keep kids’ attention. His flair for fun description pops up in lines such as “this underground base…makes Area 51 look like a candy shop.” Vocabulary words, such as “rendezvous,” are defined in context and spelled phonetically (“ron-day-voo”) to boost the educational experience. Timmy also refreshingly uses a library—not just the internet—to begin his search for his father. The bears are color-coded and have names such as Bruiser and Sneak, which emphasize their capabilities. Adults may also notice Alexander’s cleverness in naming the humorous medical bear “Patch,” after famous real-life physician Hunter “Patch” Adams.
An adroitly conceived series opener that’s tailored to action fans.Pub Date: July 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9991138-1-3
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Bickering Owls Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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