A lighthearted, endearing sci-fi romp in need of some grammatical polish.
Santos’ sci-fi adventure stars a college student who learns that his dream girl is on a secret mission.
Nicholas attends the University of California in Los Angeles. Classmates call him Moon Boy because he loves all things cosmic (and because he’s so pale). He learns that a class on cosmology will be offered, and he eagerly attends. Making his life even more perfect is the arrival of Zara, a redheaded freshman who recently moved from the East Coast. Zara tells him, “You should not focus on space to fulfill your dreams....Sometimes the things we wish for can be right before our eyes.” While bike riding, Nicholas finds an abandoned countryside shack. It starts pouring, and he runs inside. Lucky for Nicholas, Zara shows up on her own bike. The girl’s beauty and scent of jasmine overwhelm Nicholas, and the two kiss. After they start dating, Zara reveals that she comes from the planet Life in the Andromeda Galaxy. He thinks she’s joking until he wakes up on her spaceship, the Science II. In this optimistic sci-fi journey, Santos (O Outro Lado, 2017, etc.) raises issues of eco-awareness while also exploring the idea of alien abduction. Zara and the crew of the Science II are actually time-traveling Earth descendants from the 641st century on a mission to save King Zador II’s 7-year-old daughter, Princess Isadora, whose rare viral disease may be cured with the help of Nicholas’ indomitable immune system (containing the rare Lymphocyte N sequence). While Santos’ aliens are determined and manipulative, they gain heart while dealing with Nicholas, a soulful Everyman who craves only love and knowledge. The author’s warning—that humanity may shed many failings except its penchant for politics—is valuable indeed. Despite some grammar hiccups (“Nicholas thought that Monday would be a tedious one...with nothing different to happen”), the narrative’s spirited pace ferries readers toward a satisfying ending while setting up a sequel.
A lighthearted, endearing sci-fi romp in need of some grammatical polish.Pub Date: July 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-5214-3653-0
Page Count: 281
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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