The Wheel turns for all of us.
Richly researched 14th volume in the Ragoczy, Count Saint-Germain, vampire historicals, begun in the deep mists of publishing with Hotel Transylvania (1978), though the Count himself is perhaps 5,000 years old, having been apparently 3,000 years old in the 4th century of Blood Roses (1998) and 3,500 years undead in the 6th century (Come Twilight, 2000). Few works in the series are sequential, with some tales set in the 20th century. Now in 14th-century India and Asia, he is known as Sanat Ji Mani and witnesses the ghastly sacking of Delhi by the Tartar warlord Timur-i-Lenhk, known to moderns like Christopher Marlowe as Tamburlaine the Great, or Tamerlane. The Turko-Mongol takes Ragoczy captive, but the Count is befriended by Tulsi-Kil, a female acrobat, who helps him escape. He is warned, though (by Tulsi’s hairy female companion, Djerat), that he cannot have congress with the tumbler: “She will not risk starvation or death for a length of hot flesh in her woman’s portal.” During this period—exposed to the sun, a staple in his right foot—he shrinks and burns but survives by drinking at night from the necks of mules. Eventually, he beds Tulsi, her chastity a feast in exile (“her eyes closed with the enormity of her abandon”), and the two must decide whether she will become as he is, although it would mean they must part. Yarbro, all along, sprinkles her text with period summaries and with letters (in italics) from Ragoczy’s far-flung friends and servants. In the end, Tulsi vanishes.
The Wheel turns for all of us.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-87843-5
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2001
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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