by Daniel Mark Harrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 18, 2015
While ambitious and high-flying, this millennial tale remains bedazzled by the elite.
A novel follows the fortunes of young people in Shanghai and New York City who seek status, wealth, and sex against the backdrop of dynastic reincarnation.
In Butterflies: The Strange Metamorphosis of Fact & Fiction In Today’s World (2015), Harrison wrote about an exclusive Shanghai sorority and the young men in its circle, while other chapters described a Creator and something called the Logos Simulation. In this outing, set around the turn of the millennium, the author mixes up a similar brew. A foreword explains that a new leader will arise. Jews call him the Messiah; the Mongols (i.e., the Chinese) call him a Mandate. By the volume’s end, the latest Mandate “had firmly ensconced himself in the place of the world’s next powerful elite,” who would reign over the globe’s most powerful country, constituting “a reincarnation of dynastic proportions.” The work explores this ensconcing in a narrative with several main themes: a man’s guilt over a car accident that kills his daughter and her friend; the sorority; young men whose lives encompass high finance, nightclubs, and business deals; sex, romance, and political intrigue, including blackmail and bribery; and overlapping versions of the same characters and events. Some readers may enjoy the meta-ness, as well as Harrison’s brash confidence in the privileged, fast-moving world he describes. But the author’s presentation of girls as young as 14 and their sexuality make for uncomfortable reading. Just plain odd is the tale’s breathless fascination with young, beautiful, rich Asian/Eurasian girls (Harrison constantly mentions their race) and their sorority. The sorority, which mainly seems to exist as an excuse for masturbation scenes, is said to embody China’s deep respect for cultivating female leadership. The book’s self-importance also becomes a turnoff, for example with its appendix, “Understanding The Millennial Reincarnations.” Here a supposed “Professor of Millennial Literature” (obviously, the author himself) compares the book favorably with Joyce’s Ulysses and provides a short essay explaining the novel’s themes and symbolism, the better to grasp its “true brilliance.”
While ambitious and high-flying, this millennial tale remains bedazzled by the elite.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5175-1604-8
Page Count: 316
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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by TJ Klune ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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