An eventful coming-of-age novel with vivid, relatable animal characters and the promise of more adventures to come.
A young horse and a wolf pup transcend their natural instincts to form an unlikely bond of friendship in the first of a three-part series for middle-grade readers.
When Ghost, a wild Warlander horse, and his father, Pegasus, stumble upon a dead female wolf and her litter of newborns, the young horse feels an inexplicable tie to the sole surviving pup. He persuades his father to bring him to their pasture to look after. As the little wolf, Seti, grows, he becomes Ghost’s playmate and companion, although the young horse’s parents warn him that one day “he won’t see you as a friend. He’ll see you as his prey.” A dangerous chance encounter with Seti’s father separates them, and, during their time apart, Seti lives as a junior member of his father’s pack, learning how to be a wolf. Although tragedy brings the horse and wolf back together briefly, they can’t deny their natures and their separate destinies. The link between them, however, will prove unbreakable. This action-packed and compassionate story is credited to Davis, the founder of the multiplatinum-selling New Age music group Mannheim Steamroller; the text is written by TV and YA writer Valenti (Last Night at the Monarch Motel, 2013, etc.). It pulls readers into a human-free, natural world of wild forest and pastures where the young animals grow through friendship and adversity. The tale employs a deft blend of authentic animal characteristics and humanlike thoughts and speech (the latter rendered in italics). Realistic charcoal images by Taylor effectively complement mood and action; a subtle design of hoof and paw prints running throughout the pages underscores the theme of interspecies friendship. The book also includes information about the lives and histories of real-life Warlander horses and timber wolves and a brief glossary of story-related words. In addition, there’s a 45-minute CD of “soft atmospheric effects”—rain and thunder, running water, buzzing insects, frogs, and birds—and a bit of musical pageantry and otherworldly sound effects that seem to represent the magical bond between Ghost and Seti.
An eventful coming-of-age novel with vivid, relatable animal characters and the promise of more adventures to come.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9656909-2-8
Page Count: 107
Publisher: Mannheim Steamroller LLC
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
The years pass by at a fast and steamy clip in Blume’s latest adult novel (Wifey, not reviewed; Smart Women, 1984) as two friends find loyalties and affections tested as they grow into young women. In sixth grade, when Victoria Weaver is asked by new girl Caitlin Somers to spend the summer with her on Martha’s Vineyard, her life changes forever. Victoria, or more commonly Vix, lives in a small house; her brother has muscular dystrophy; her mother is unhappy, and money is scarce. Caitlin, on the other hand, lives part of the year with her wealthy mother Phoebe, who’s just moved to Albuquerque, and summers with her father Lamb, equally affluent, on the Vineyard. The story of how this casual invitation turns the two girls into what they call "Summer sisters" is prefaced with a prologue in which Vix is asked by Caitlin to be her matron of honor. The years in between are related in brief segments by numerous characters, but mostly by Vix. Caitlin, determined never to be ordinary, is always testing the limits, and in adolescence falls hard for Von, an older construction worker, while Vix falls for his friend Bru. Blume knows the way kids and teens speak, but her two female leads are less credible as they reach adulthood. After high school, Caitlin travels the world and can’t understand why Vix, by now at Harvard on a scholarship and determined to have a better life than her mother has had, won’t drop out and join her. Though the wedding briefly revives Vix’s old feelings for Bru, whom Caitlin is marrying, Vix is soon in love with Gus, another old summer friend, and a more compatible match. But Caitlin, whose own demons have been hinted at, will not be so lucky. The dark and light sides of friendship breathlessly explored in a novel best saved for summer beachside reading.
Pub Date: May 8, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-32405-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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