Brown brings back the souped-up helicopters that were the technostars of Hammerhead (1990) for a supporting role in a near- future war between Lithuania and Belarus. That's Byelorussia to those still updating their old globes. Lithuania is the much more likable victim in a war that parallels Saddam Hussein's attack on tiny Kuwait. The villains here are a General Anton Voschanka, a Byelorussian who also heads all CIS (ex-USSR) forces in the neighborhood, and Viktor Gabovich, an especially nasty ex-KGB type who controls a supersecret aeronautical research center near the Lithuanian capital. Both these creeps hate the new commonwealth, loathe the Lithuanians, and pine for the old world order. One of their chief irritants is General Dominikas Palcikas. Palcikas was a Soviet hero until he cast his lot with the renegade Baltic republic. Now he is head of the tiny Lithuanian defense forces. Tough, charismatic, and just a touch fascist (but not in the least Nazi), Palcikas has heard the sabers rattling across the border, and he's whipping his forces into shape for war. But the Byelorussians are armed with nuclear weapons and outnumber the Balts a zillion to one. America's post- Bush president wants to help when the invasion starts, but he doesn't want to get dragged into war. He is forced to reach for the mad genius of the Air Force, General Brad Elliott, who has a plan that will save Lithuania and, at the same time, rescue one of the heroes of a previous Brown novel (Flight of the Old Dog, 1986) who's been brainwashed by the KGB into believing he's a Soviet plane designer and has been chemically induced to design the first Russian Stealth bomber. Elliott and his troops make good use of those handy new helicopter-cum-fixed-wing planes that float like butterflies and sting like bees. Longer than Desert Storm—but with much more satisfactory results.
Pub Date: Aug. 12, 1992
ISBN: 0-399-13739-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1992
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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