Butterflies are pretty, light, and charming; this book, not so much.
Harrison mixes vignettes of the sex lives of rich people, mainly young and Eurasian, with journalistic pieces on economics, physics, and politics.
In the fictional portions of this book, members of a Shanghai sorority—an exclusive club for rich, politically well-connected young women—jockey for position as they enjoy luxurious lifestyles and explore their sexuality. Meanwhile, the young men in their circle work business deals, take drugs, pursue status, and chase women. In other chapters, a Creator called Taupin, living on a planet with three suns, tries to make sense of the Logos Simulation. There are also ghosts. In the nonfiction sections, journalist/entrepreneur Harrison, writing his debut work, sets forth his research and theories on such topics as hyperdimensionality, consciousness, authenticity, socioeconomics, bitcoin, and democracy. The author recommends his peripatetic, flitting style—or butterfly approach—to the reader as the best method for understanding coming change. Harrison draws some interesting connections, as when he compares the 1989 Tiananmen Square protestors to American hip-hop artists. He can be opaque (readers with “no inclination for a massively technical discussion” are invited to skip Chapter 3), but he explains the intricacies of, for example, digital-payment systems well: “Because bitcoin is all part of one great code, it is impossible for a single bitcoin to be counterfeit.” Alongside so much lesbian teenage sex, this could be a heady mix. But often, the book resembles nothing so much as dull 18th-century pornography in which sordid sex scenes alternate with treatises on political liberty: “ ‘Now personally,’ surmised Gina, waving her left finger, still wet with my white cum smear, ‘I don’t think that God is light or dark or maybe even anything.’ ” Also, while the work is breathlessly excited by all things cutting edge, its presentation of female sexuality is not well-informed fiction: “I came on my clit,” says a confused young lady.
Butterflies are pretty, light, and charming; this book, not so much.Pub Date: May 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1512128680
Page Count: 382
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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