A wealth of white-hat hacking gives this enjoyable sequel a boost.
A group’s noble effort to validate astrology entails the rather illegal procurement of millions of people’s private information in this second installment of a series.
Rufus is a sheep farmer by trade, but his real passion is astrology. He’s even written a book, in which his discussion of unified religions is supported by astrological science—including the concept that everyone’s life is guided by heavenly bodies. Rufus’ ideas earn him an invite to the Data Collection Group, which hopes to authenticate astrology by linking real-life data with horoscope predictions. This requires a colossal amount of information, as specific as possible. Hacking’s the best option, and Rufus—along with his nephew Robert and Robert’s hacker pals, Petey and Matthew—has already gotten his hands on the 1960-2010 American census data. But the “money people,” including Walter and his wife, Erica, want more, from data brokers to social media. Walter’s soon-to-open, wholly legitimate Institute for Humanistic Innovation will give the DCG covert access to a supercomputer to handle the mass of material. Though it’s a large-scale invasion of privacy, the group’s purpose is philanthropic, with no plans to steal anyone’s identity. Some in the DCG, however, have a hidden agenda that most, including Rufus, may oppose. While Jaegers’ (Astrologer’s Apprentice, 2016) series opener was primarily an introduction to astrological theories, his latest tale focuses on espionage. One scheme for pilfering data, for example, begins with a faked cyberattack, which, to avoid detection, puts Petey and Matthew in two different states with encrypted laptops. This maintains a constant threat of arrest or incarceration, as well as some humor: Rufus acknowledges DCG members in public with a surreptitious nod or wink. The story’s unhurried but absorbing, dishing out character dilemmas (Petey may give up a college diploma for DCG) and spiritual insight from Rufus: “Each man’s soul is an integral part of a collective universal soul.” Jaegers ends the novel by leaving the door wide open for another.
A wealth of white-hat hacking gives this enjoyable sequel a boost.Pub Date: June 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-88074-6
Page Count: 263
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2017
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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