Even Angelology addicts likely face disappointment. Then again, maybe not.
Sequel to the best-selling Angelology (2010), wherein a dedicated cadre of Angelologists battle the beautiful yet sadomasochistically evil angel-human hybrids who’ve controlled human affairs since Noah's flood.
In Paris, angel hunter V.A. Verlaine searches for former nun Evangeline, once a normal, wingless, red-blooded human, now somehow metamorphosed into a winged, blue-blooded, angel-powered Nephilim. Evangeline presents Verlaine with a fabulous Fabergé egg before allowing herself to be captured by Eno, the blackhearted, lesser-angel servant of the Grigori family, the most powerful Nephilim. Since Eno will convey Evangeline to the panopticon, the Grigoris’ vast prison/research center in Siberia where she will face torture and experimentation, the egg is an important clue. Where better to research the egg, Verlaine reasons, than the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg? The egg, it emerges, contains the secret to an elixir that may prove decisive in the struggle against the Nephilim. Another key to the elixir is found in an old album of jottings and pressed flowers left by Rasputin, but some of the plants mentioned in the recipe are now extinct. But wait! Fortunately, Noah didn’t just pack all the animals aboard his ark, he also grabbed plants and seeds! So, while Verlaine climbs aboard the train to Siberia to rescue Evangeline, his colleagues head for the Black Sea, where settlements flourished before Noah’s flood. The plot, of which the foregoing is barely a hint, twisting itself into knots trying, and failing, not to contradict itself, and upon which an ordinary world beyond eggs, floods, documents, battling angels, pressed flowers and what-all barely impinges. Despite the frequent violence, the action consists largely of antagonists whose main objective, seemingly, is not to defeat, kill or seriously inconvenience their opponents. Expect pages and pages of abstruse discussion about Fabergé eggs, Noah, genetics and angelic anatomy.
Even Angelology addicts likely face disappointment. Then again, maybe not.Pub Date: March 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-670-02554-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
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
An addictive psychological thriller.
When a mysterious novel appears on her bedside table, a successful documentary filmmaker finds herself face to face with a secret that threatens to unravel life as she knows it.
Catherine Ravenscroft has built a dream life, or close to it: the devoted husband, the house in London, the award-winning career as a documentary filmmaker. And though she’s never quite bonded with her 25-year-old son the way she’d hoped, he’s doing fine—there are worse things than being an electronics salesman. But when she stumbles across a sinister novel called The Perfect Stranger—no one’s quite sure how it came into the house—Catherine sees herself in its pages, living out scenes from her past she’d hoped to forget. It’s a threat—but from whom? And why now, 20 years after the fact? Meanwhile, Stephen Brigstocke, a retired teacher, widowed and in pain, is desperate to exact revenge on Catherine and make her pay for what happened all those years ago. The story is told in alternating chapters, Catherine's in the third-person and Stephen's in the first, as the two orbit each other, predator and prey, and the novel moves between the past and the present to paint a portrait of two troubled families with trauma bubbling under the surface. As their lives become increasingly entangled, Stephen’s obsession grows, Catherine’s world crumbles, and it becomes clear that—in true thriller form—everything may not be as it seems. But how much destruction must be wrought before the truth comes out? And when it does, will there be anything left to salvage? While the long buildup to the big reveal begins to drag, Knight’s elegant plot and compelling (if not unexpected) characters keep the heart of the novel beating even when the pacing falters. Atmospheric and twisting and ripe for TV adaptation, this debut novel never strays far from convention, but that doesn’t make it any less of a page-turner.
An addictive psychological thriller.Pub Date: May 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236225-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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