A few weak plot points may appeal to the reader’s blind faith rather than their reason, but this is a fully imagined,...
Litwack’s (Along the Watchtower, 2013, etc.) latest novel tells the story of a mysterious child who abandons her homeland in an effort to achieve spiritual forgiveness in a neighboring, hostile nation.
When star-crossed lovers Helena Brewster and Jason Adams save a child from drowning after her boat is dashed against the rocks, they are captivated by her ethereal nature, her vague and prophetic responses, and her insistence on referring to herself as “The Daughter of the Sea and the Sky.” The two are shocked to discover the child, Kailani, has left The Blessed Lands and a faith-based way of life to venture into The Republic, a land dedicated to reason and knowledge and her own nation’s fierce opponent in a series of bitter wars. The government of The Republic, under the direction of chief examiner Carlson, is quick to sequester Kailani and keep her under observation to determine if she is there on an evangelical mission—an illegal action that could lead to her incarceration. Carlson eventually releases her into the custody of Helena and Jason so she can stay with them in an art colony in the Northern Kingdom until her fate is decided by a tribunal hearing. Once there, Kailani becomes the object of obsessive interest to Benjamin, a fanatic who encourages a cult following to grow up around her, placing her legal status and her own safety at risk. Litwack artfully makes use of strange and familiar aspects of our own culture to eerie effect (Jason is helping establish a communication network obviously based upon the Internet, and The Northern Kingdom reads like Vermont). There are some points of weakness within the plot. It’s unclear, for instance, why it takes Jason, who is a communications engineer, so long to discover that a technically unsavvy individual is sending messages on his own machine.
A few weak plot points may appeal to the reader’s blind faith rather than their reason, but this is a fully imagined, gripping read nonetheless.Pub Date: April 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1622534326
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Evolved Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A treat for fans of The Evil Dead or Zombieland, complete with affordable solutions for better living.
A hardy band of big-box retail employees must dig down for their personal courage when ghosts begin stalking them through home furnishings.
You have to give it up for the wave of paranormal novels that have plagued the last decade in literature; at least they’ve made writers up their games when it comes to finding new settings in which to plot their scary moments. That’s the case with this clever little horror story from longtime pop-culture journalist Hendrix (Satan Loves You, 2012, etc.). Set inside a disturbingly familiar Scandinavian furniture superstore in Cleveland called Orsk, the book starts as a Palahniuk-tinged satire about the things we own—the novel is even wrapped in the form of a retail catalog complete with product illustrations. Our main protagonist is Amy, an aimless 24-year-old retail clerk. She and an elderly co-worker, Ruth Anne, are recruited by their anal-retentive boss, Basil (a closet geek), to investigate a series of strange breakages by walking the showroom floor overnight. They quickly uncover two other co-workers, Matt and Trinity, who have stayed in the store to film a reality show called Ghost Bomb in hopes of catching a spirit on tape. It’s cute and quite funny in a Scooby Doo kind of way until they run across Carl, a homeless squatter who's just trying to catch a break. Following an impromptu séance, Carl is possessed by an evil spirit and cuts his own throat. It turns out the Orsk store was built on the remains of a brutal prison called the Cuyahoga Panopticon, and its former warden, Josiah Worth, has returned from the dead to start up operations again. It sounds like an absurd setting for a haunted-house novel, but Hendrix makes it work to the story’s advantage, turning the psychological manipulations and scripted experiences that are inherent to the retail experience into a sinister fight for survival.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59474-526-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
War is hell in this novel of inspired absurdity.
Hailed as heroes on a stateside tour before returning to Iraq, Bravo Squad discovers just what it has been fighting for.
Though the shellshocked humor will likely conjure comparisons with Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five, the debut novel by Fountain (following his story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, 2006) focuses even more on the cross-promotional media monster that America has become than it does on the absurdities of war. The entire novel takes place over a single Thanksgiving Day, when the eight soldiers (with their memories of the two who didn’t make it) find themselves at the promotional center of an all-American extravaganza, a nationally televised Dallas Cowboys football game. Providing the novel with its moral compass is protagonist Billy Lynn, a 19-year-old virgin from small-town Texas who has been inflated into some kind of cross between John Wayne and Audie Murphy for his role in a rescue mission documented by an embedded Fox News camera. In two days, the Pentagon-sponsored “Victory Tour” will end and Bravo will return to the business as usual of war. In the meantime, they are dealing with a producer trying to negotiate a film deal (“Think Rocky meets Platoon,” though Hilary Swank is rumored to be attached), glad-handing with the corporate elite of Cowboy fandom (and ownership), and suffering collateral damage during a halftime spectacle with Beyoncé. Over the course of this long, alcohol-fueled day, Billy finds himself torn, as he falls in love (and lust) with a devout Christian cheerleader and listens to his sister try to persuade him that he has done his duty and should refuse to go back. As “Americans fight the war daily in their strenuous inner lives,” Billy and his foxhole brethren discover treachery and betrayal beyond anything they’ve experienced on the battlefield.
War is hell in this novel of inspired absurdity.Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-088559-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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