Entertaining supernatural erotica that needs streamlining.
This debut fantasy stars a former FBI agent who’s drawn into the erotic and dangerous world of Jinns.
Sheba Blair lives in a cabin in the Whistler Mountains in British Columbia. A former FBI agent, she’s hiding from the world after supposedly dying in the Silent Falls plane bombing last year, which killed numerous Saudi business elites. Sheba’s sky diving skills saved her life, and now she’s a therapist to those partially blind or going blind, like her client Al Saks. Revenge has come for her, however, in the form of Prince Damien, whose wife and son were lost in the bombing. Luckily, Sheba is a Seer, with the blood of Jinns in her veins. Jinns are powerful creatures of wind and fire, and one named Prince Suliman has been hiding from his nemesis, Prince Rashid, on Whistler Mountain. One morning Sheba finds her friend Olav on the ground by the stables. She rushes to his aid, and before dying, he tells her that a shape-shifting stranger has decided to protect her. She also learns that her recently purchased antique typewriter is capable of delivering warnings regarding violent activity. When Prince Suliman finally contacts Sheba, he explains that he’s been battling the murderous Red Wolf clan, which has sown violence in the area. And despite his ghostly presence and otherworldly blue skin, Sheba finds the prince deeply attractive. In this erotic fantasy thriller, Wolf strives to titillate her audience. She’s explicit early on when describing a “bondage den” where chilly, entitled women “longed to feel something, even if it were only pain.” Though Prince Suliman creates plenty of steam with Sheba and, later, a male commando named Umar, he feeds his lover’s soul with wisdom such as, “A person’s true destiny can be revealed only by their faith in who they are.” The novel’s first half is dense and jumbled, and the reader must extract plot points from cluttered prose. In the second, an emphasis on dialogue and a few remarkable twists—including other-dimensional invaders—reveal an authorial voice still evolving. Wolf’s fearless imagination, however, should serve her well in the fantasy genre.
Entertaining supernatural erotica that needs streamlining.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64182-204-6
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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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