A brisk, delightful tale of family, courage, and a chilly monster.
In this debut novel, two teenagers join an ice fishing community in battling a mythological creature across parallel dimensions.
Falc was lucky to survive an outdoor mishap during a blistering winter in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. A neighbor found the hypothermic and frostbitten 14-year-old atop a frozen lake, his shortcut home from school. But no one can explain why the boy was soaking wet when there were no holes or even cracks in the ice. Now, Falc prefers avoiding frozen lakes but willingly braves one for an overnight stay with Grandpa Rikkar, who lives nearby and has recently shown signs of Alzheimer’s disease. It turns out Rikkar and his friends’ ice shantytown isn’t so bad, especially with green-eyed fellow ninth grader Aiyanna there as well. But the teens panic when all the adults, including Aiyanna’s dad, suddenly vanish during the night. The youngsters eventually find them only to discover they’ve stumbled on a way of traveling to alternate realities. Different versions of the fishing community relentlessly fight the Jiekna, an ice creature sporting a perpetually morphing face and tentacled claws. Falc and Aiyanna lend their assistance, as killing the vicious beast may help them get home. Raymond’s speedy tale brims with suspense; the community faces multiple threats, such as “ice-phants” (ice phantoms) and the alarming possibility that the shantytown in all the dimensions is sinking. The author likewise depicts an unforgettable setting of merciless ice and subzero temperatures. His prose is sure to make readers bundle up: “A blast of wind hurled snow flurries across the arctic tundra, causing the party to lean in to protect the flames.” The cast, in contrast, is warm, from capable Aiyanna to a character named Slash, who ice-sculpts—and more—with her handy chainsaw. Nevertheless, Falc’s sad but heartfelt relationship with his grandpa is the highlight. His affection for Rikkar’s alternate versions never wavers, as the boy was already prepared to love a grandfather who no longer recognized him.
A brisk, delightful tale of family, courage, and a chilly monster.Pub Date: March 10, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-7970-9185-1
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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