Some interesting characters and compelling set pieces, but from this talented storyteller (Scorched Earth, 2002, etc.), it’s...
The last WWII battle between the Russians and the Germans produced a crescendo of death and destruction—and, now, a surprisingly flat novel.
In 1943, Hitler, still reeling from his Stalingrad debacle, rolls the dice in Russia a final time, hoping to recoup by taking the key city of Kursk. It’s heavily defended, but Hitler has a dazzling new weapon: tanks, or rather a particular tank, the mighty Mark VI, a.k.a. the Tiger. This war machine dominates wherever it appears, inspiring the kind of blind adoration that undercuts tactics and makes fools out of generals. The Russians have their T-34, clever, darting lightweights, but the Tigers are super-tanks: “proud and powerful like fresh angry bulls.” Hopelessly in love, Hitler counts on them to deliver victory in Operation Citadel, the monster battle that will soon involve two million men—and a few women. Among them is Lieutenant Katya Berka, one of the so-called Night Witches: female bomber pilots who fly tiny, fragile planes, fly them “low and slow” in the interest of maximum accuracy, and fly them in almost constant peril. But Katya never thinks much about peril. Cossacks don’t, and that's what Katya is: a horseless Cossack with attitude intact. It’s a description that applies with equal force to her father Dima and big brother Volya , T-34 men who drive their tank as if it had four legs and a flowing mane. In the coming fight, gallant Katya will do her share and more; still, everybody knows it will be a tank battle, epic and Tiger-centered, but nobody has a true fix on how that will translate in terms of carnage.
Some interesting characters and compelling set pieces, but from this talented storyteller (Scorched Earth, 2002, etc.), it’s a slow-moving disappointment, impeded by all that tank lore.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2003
ISBN: 0-553-80177-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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