A gripping but uneven tale about a political revolution.
A thriller sequel sees a woman and her soldiers establish a new republic.
After the devastating events in Miller’s series opener that ended in the death of Princeton professor Angus Turner, an informal, well-intentioned organization called the Book Club has disbanded, with its vigilante members suffering the ill effects of trauma and betrayal. Princeton mathematics professor Albert Puddles, one of the Book Club’s members, is in hiding, drowning his sorrows in alcohol and helplessly following the whirlwind political changes in the United States. He watches from afar as Cristina Culebra and her army rise to power and state after state secedes from America to join the ranks of her Republic of Enlightenment and Democracy. Her use of the life-changing principles of something called the Tree of Knowledge, which involves a math formula and algorithm, allows Cristina to manipulate events to gain absolute control. Yet Albert’s own ability to see the future employing the same concept leaves him hopelessly unable to figure out a way to alter the political landscape. An unpredictable event occurs when a mysterious terrorist known as the Cipher disrupts Cristina’s seemingly unstoppable ascent and organizes a resistance movement. The members of the Book Club see this as the best possible moment to reassemble in a last-ditch effort to stop Cristina’s coup. With deaths, treachery, and a foe in their ranks, Albert and the Book Club face their biggest challenge yet. This sequel, a marked improvement over its predecessor, features a taut plot, less academic prose, and a reduced reliance on the Tree of Knowledge as a narrative gimmick. Instead, this installment skillfully focuses on the personal anguish of Albert as well as on a greater examination of the ethics of using the Tree of Knowledge for good or evil. On the other hand, the Cipher’s modus operandi of leaving fairly easy ciphers to be decrypted by the terrorist’s followers (“Solve the cipher. Follow the Cipher”) undermines the radical’s supposed genius. The peculiar religious motifs connected to the Cipher also feel out of place. And Cristina’s largely unopposed and meteoric rise in the U.S. seems implausible and unearned. Readers’ engagement will depend on the extent to which they embrace the over-the-top premise. Still, fans of the first book will likely enjoy the riveting sequel.
A gripping but uneven tale about a political revolution.Pub Date: March 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73764-630-3
Page Count: 319
Publisher: Houndstooth Books
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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