An exciting and fast-paced time-travel fantasy starring an action odd couple.
A tough guy and a genius embark on a dimension-hopping adventure.
As Salter’s novel opens, all seems peaceful enough. A cheerful group—Breslin “Brex” Herndon, the smartest science nerd in the world; Jack “Jacks” Rigalto, his friend and former bodyguard; and Sara, Jacks’ 6-year-old daughter—is enjoying a day in Manhattan’s Battery Park when a mysterious portal, a schimmerplotz, opens in thin air. Brex and Sara are spiritually drawn to it. By the time the quick connection is broken and Jacks’ friend and daughter are restored to him, they know quite a bit about the portal—and the dystopian world on the other side of it. The two experienced the horror of this grim realm and the dark villainy of a general named Bnindagun, and, unfortunately for them, he’s aware of them in turn. Brex and Jacks are employees of the newly created Cosmic Intelligence Group. Much to Brex’s confusion, his bosses don’t seem interested in following up on what looks like Bnindagun’s elaborate plan to range over different dimensions and diverse time periods. This throws the burden of an investigation squarely on the wisecracking but effective team of Brex and Jacks in a fast-paced plot that reaches out to include Sara; Jacks’ wife, Momma Sara; and her identical twin sister, Tara. Salter adopts a breezy, friendly tone throughout. Even during the story’s frequent and well-managed action sequences and when the plot’s developments are sinister and foreboding, the author maintains a bouncy repartee between his unlikely pair of heroes, always contrasting Brex’s arch intellectual snobbery with Jacks’ rugged directness. As the first volume of an action-adventure series, the book is winningly inviting. The two heroes go from one mishap to another in Bnindagun’s alternate timeline, always with Brex supplying the exposition and Jacks delivering the snappy comebacks. Readers will be eager for more.
An exciting and fast-paced time-travel fantasy starring an action odd couple.Pub Date: Dec. 22, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-58-604581-2
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Dingbat Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A quick read that offers a fun, modern update on the lives of a royal family many know and love.
In the 12th installment of the Princess Diaries series, Cabot brings readers back to Genovia in the year 2020 as Princess Mia navigates her hardest, wackiest challenges yet.
It’s March 2020, and for Princess Mia Thermopolis, it’s not all sunshine and pears in the royal palace. Not only has she just been informed by the prime minister that there is a worldwide pandemic, but her own grandmother has just been seen partying on a yacht with several fratty spring breakers from America. Within days, Mia issues a quarantine for the residents of Genovia, closing their small country’s borders…much to the dismay of her bar-owning Cousin Ivan and a family of bakers conveniently named the Paninis. When Mia’s husband, Michael, is exposed to the virus and ordered to self-isolate, Mia resorts to day-drinking and sweatpants-wearing, all in an attempt to remain sane with the entire Thermopolis family under one roof. Over the course of early quarantine, the number of palace inhabitants begins to resemble a small country, including Mia’s best friend, Lilly; ex-frenemy Lana and her Beyoncé-ified kids, Purple Iris and Sir Jason Junior; and her “InFLUENZer” Grandmère’s new American friends, Chad and Derek. While Mia works to maintain a semblance of normalcy within Genovia, conditions begin to escalate for the worse. Ivan sues her for disrupting the sale of booze, her other cousin Prince René stages anti-mask protests outside the castle walls, Michael is creating a vaccine with his high school ex-girlfriend, and Grandmère declares that she and Derek are engaged to be married. Can Mia protect her country from a deadly virus amid family lawsuits, purchases of 5,000 wedding napkins, and one ancient, pool-drinking cat named Fat Louie? Cabot’s beloved princess has grown into a strong, resilient leader, though her pandemic problems are perhaps relatively mild compared to those of real European countries. Regardless, Mia’s quirky and honest diary entries are a welcome take on subject matter readers know all too well.
A quick read that offers a fun, modern update on the lives of a royal family many know and love.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780063291935
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
A moving portrait of rueful middle age and the failure to connect.
An acclaimed novelist revisits the central characters of his best-known work.
At the end of Brooklyn (2009), Eilis Lacey departed Ireland for the second and final time—headed back to New York and the Italian American husband she had secretly married after first traveling there for work. In her hometown of Enniscorthy, she left behind Jim Farrell, a young man she’d fallen in love with during her visit, and the inevitable gossip about her conduct. Tóibín’s 11th novel introduces readers to Eilis 20 years later, in 1976, still married to Tony Fiorello and living in the titular suburbia with their two teenage children. But Eilis’ seemingly placid existence is disturbed when a stranger confronts her, accusing Tony of having an affair with his wife—now pregnant—and threatening to leave the baby on their doorstep. “She’d known men like this in Ireland,” Tóibín writes. “Should one of them discover that their wife had been unfaithful and was pregnant as a result, they would not have the baby in the house.” This shock sends Eilis back to Enniscorthy for a visit—or perhaps a longer stay. (Eilis’ motives are as inscrutable as ever, even to herself.) She finds the never-married Jim managing his late father’s pub; unbeknownst to Eilis (and the town), he’s become involved with her widowed friend Nancy, who struggles to maintain the family chip shop. Eilis herself appears different to her old friends: “Something had happened to her in America,” Nancy concludes. Although the novel begins with a soap-operatic confrontation—and ends with a dramatic denouement, as Eilis’ fate is determined in a plot twist worthy of Edith Wharton—the author is a master of quiet, restrained prose, calmly observing the mores and mindsets of provincial Ireland, not much changed from the 1950s.
A moving portrait of rueful middle age and the failure to connect.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781476785110
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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