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JUNGLE BEAUTY GODDESSES

AQUATIC BALL

While some points remain obvious, this tale provides a remarkable look at interplanetary relations.

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This second installment of an SF series focuses on alien sisters.

The story begins with a bleak portrait of Dr. Peter L. Roy, a once-respected paleontologist who has since come to ruin. In the first volume of this series, Roy came into contact with the Jungle Beauty Goddesses, a group of sisters from the far-off planet of Ventopia. Roy made a great deal of money from these beauties, though those days are over. As their name would indicate, the Goddesses are more like mythical beings than your average extraterrestrials. Their father is a powerful figure of creation named Dematter, and he gave the girls Earth as a birthday present. The sisters were tasked with caring for the fledgling planet. In Book 2, things on Earth are not exactly going well. For one, much of Earth’s landscape is sinking into the seas. Dematter sends the girls back to the planet to bury the bones of their dead sibling, Afar. They must do this “to prevent a galactic planetary catastrophe that could possibly destroy several galaxies.” To make matters more complicated, one of the girls who had been raped during the group’s previous visit to Earth is now pregnant. Will the mission succeed even if the Goddesses have to ask Roy for help? Sturges’ (Jungle Beauty Goddesses: Pretty Blue Ball, 2019, etc.) whimsical novel offers different narrators, a society of mermaids who live under the sea, and even some hot and heavy lovemaking. The last is the case when Dematter, while with his wife, “feels his manhood knocking at the gate of her lady garden.” Such a mix delivers a refreshingly unusual voice that is far less stuffy than one might imagine for a tale about the creating and unmaking of worlds. But the insights from some characters can be banal. As Qattara, one of the sisters, explains to readers: “Unfortunately, my sisters and I have possibly screwed things up beyond repair.” While Qattara’s observation may be accurate, it could easily have been inferred from the text. Yet in the end, the story keeps moving briskly, and the plight of these odd, semimythical aliens proves a memorable experience.    

While some points remain obvious, this tale provides a remarkable look at interplanetary relations.

Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-9889723-0-8

Page Count: 115

Publisher: Manuscript

Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2020

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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MAGIC HOUR

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

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