A fine collection that imbues fantasy, action and horror with real literary depth.
Ghosts, monsters and trials at sea complicate romances in these energetic, atmospheric stories.
British Fantasy Society August Derleth Award–winner Brenchley provides deft sketches in a range of styles and settings—from age-of-sail adventure to modern urban realism, always with splashes of the supernatural and the macabre. Certain characters, themes and plot devices resonate throughout the collection. Several stories, for example, concern psychologically fraught vigils for dying men, held by friends and lovers, who experience spectral presences as subtle emanations of regret and spent passions. More rambunctious are a series of maritime yarns about a transhistorical figure named Sailor Martin, who plies the oceans from the 18th century, when he braves pirates, serial killers and sea creatures—including a bracing whale hunt worthy of Moby-Dick—to the present, when he copes with the inexplicable fritzing-out of radios and global positioning systems. In most of the stories, there’s also an amorous relationship involving an older, experienced, authoritative man who shepherds a slender, coltish youth—or, in one case, an entire floating brothel of such—through manly undertakings in and out of the sack. The erotic elements are sometimes hackneyed, as in a take on Dracula, in which the goth cheesiness culminates in pale boys sucking away at a man who seems less than horrified at their attentions. More convincing are quieter evocations of mature love, as when a man tends to his dying lover while fending off the mopey ghost of his uncle. Brenchley’s horror is most effective when it’s understated, a matter of half-seen apparitions and anxious disorientation; these build spookily to a shocking climax in a bravura tale of a man haunted by the ghost of a missing girl. Not every story is a masterpiece, but the author’s vigorous prose and well-paced storytelling will keep readers turning pages as his twisty characters get inside their heads.
A fine collection that imbues fantasy, action and horror with real literary depth.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1590215777
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Lethe Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
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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