An inventive novel that runs amok.
A supernatural medical thriller that straddles several genres.
Spencer Williams, with his long brown hair and gentle eyes, might just be the messiah. He’s also a medical researcher who has created a new drug that he hopes will cure depression, increase intelligence, send muscle mass through the roof and generally speedup human evolution. When Dr. Lara Nash, the new vice president of research and development for Global Pharmaceuticals, approaches Spencer, the scientist must decide if he’s willing to sell out his life’s work to gain corporate support. But Spencer isn’t your average lab nerd. He has psychic powers that enable him to read minds, quickly evaluate personality and character, and gain a supernatural understanding of his environment. Atkins (Best Place to Die, 2012, etc.) has crafted an epic story that involves multiple orders of angels and demons and an ancient battle between “the Creator” and the devil, aka Karel Von Graff, CEO of Global Pharmaceuticals. Soon, Karel uses his power to control Lara, Spencer and others. In the end, only Spencer’s guardian angels can protect his invention and save humanity. The novel combines the grand mythology of a fantasy novel with the paranoid suspicion and verisimilitude of a medical thriller, but the results are uneven. Atkins is a physician who invokes a palpable sense of outrage about the pharmaceutical industry’s cozy relationship with researchers, doctors and universities. The novel, however, struggles with the scope of its action, and the fantastical elements often feel forced. Characters tend to deliver long internal monologues that explain their powers and ruminate on the battles between good and evil. At times, it’s hard to determine who to care about. For example, Lara is a sympathetic character in a cutthroat world, even though she’s literally doing the work of the devil. Each of the characters also stumbles into awkward romances that feel like unnecessary attempts to heighten the novel’s emotional impact. The book is imaginative, however, and there’s something undeniably delicious about the devil saying, “I’m the head of the world’s largest pharmaceutical company…who did you think I’d be?” Ultimately, however, this thriller suffers from too much exposition, simplistic characters and a lack of focus.
An inventive novel that runs amok.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-0786753826
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Argo-Navis
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.
Self-assured, entertaining debut novel that blends genres and crosses continents in quest of magic.
The world’s not big enough for two wizards, as Tolkien taught us—even if that world is the shiny, modern one of the late 19th century, with its streetcars and electric lights and newfangled horseless carriages. Yet, as first-time novelist Morgenstern imagines it, two wizards there are, if likely possessed of more legerdemain than true conjuring powers, and these two are jealous of their turf. It stands to reason, the laws of the universe working thus, that their children would meet and, rather than continue the feud into a new generation, would instead fall in love. Call it Romeo and Juliet for the Gilded Age, save that Morgenstern has her eye on a different Shakespearean text, The Tempest; says a fellow called Prospero to young magician Celia of the name her mother gave her, “She should have named you Miranda...I suppose she was not clever enough to think of it.” Celia is clever, however, a born magician, and eventually a big hit at the Circus of Dreams, which operates, naturally, only at night and has a slightly sinister air about it. But what would you expect of a yarn one of whose chief setting-things-into-action characters is known as “the man in the grey suit”? Morgenstern treads into Harry Potter territory, but though the chief audience for both Rowling and this tale will probably comprise of teenage girls, there are only superficial genre similarities. True, Celia’s magical powers grow, and the ordinary presto-change-o stuff gains potency—and, happily, surrealistic value. Finally, though, all the magic has deadly consequence, and it is then that the tale begins to take on the contours of a dark thriller, all told in a confident voice that is often quite poetic, as when the man in the grey suit tells us, “There’s magic in that. It’s in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict.”
Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-385-53463-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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