A tightly executed first fantasy installment that champions the exploratory spirit.
Litwack (The Daughter of the Sea and the Sky, 2014) begins a new fantasy series about a post-apocalyptic future run by religious fanatics.
In the quiet village of Little Pond, Nathaniel, Thomas, and Orah are teenage friends on the verge of adulthood. What responsibilities will they shoulder in their rural society, which frowns upon music, forbids unsanctioned books, and discourages imagination? As tradition dictates, a vicar arrives from the Temple of Light to choose someone among the new adults who needs a “teaching,” a mysterious ritual from which the chosen return quite somber. Although Nathaniel dreams of adventure and wants to see the magical Temple City, the vicar chooses Thomas instead. It turns out that the teaching process involves solitary confinement and other mental manipulations to crush people’s wills and keep the villagers from flirting with “darkness.” Soon after Thomas returns as a dead-eyed husk, Nathaniel learns of the temple’s true nature; when the vicars take Orah, Nathaniel is outraged, so he travels to Temple City and offers to take the girl’s place. While temporarily confined, he meets another prisoner named Samuel, who explains that the temple’s magic actually came from a prior society that prized individual freedom and creativity. Somewhere, he says, is a hidden keep full of wonders, and if it’s found by the right person, its secrets could start a revolution. As Litwack opens his meticulously crafted new series, he aids his righteous protagonists with a series of magical scrolls, written clues, and cooperative “keepers.” He effectively describes how the Temple of Light uses doublespeak to praise its monoculture and vilify the era of darkness, in which “people spoke different languages and worshipped different gods.” The author never veers into zealotry himself, however, always exploring both sides of the progress-versus-security argument (“Perhaps the quest for knowledge brought change faster than it could be assimilated,” muses a vicar). Orah, meanwhile, provides the soul of the narrative: a young woman who’s wistful and optimistic by turns and who understands that although “nothing can compete with childhood,” there’s no going back.
A tightly executed first fantasy installment that champions the exploratory spirit.Pub Date: June 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62253-434-0
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Evolved Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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