A gripping, macabre action story only occasionally marred by slow spots.
When a Mayan god threatens to wreak havoc on Earth, a young man and his friends must confront their shared destiny.
Young Juan Guerrero has a fighting spirit inside him that he calls his Wolf. His grandfather Manuel was teaching him how to use his powers, but when an armed gang, including several odd members completely covered in black robes, came to the Guerrero’s small village in Mexico and murdered Manuel, Juan’s Wolf took charge of his body. When the dust cleared, most of the gang was dead, the rest were on the run and Juan was in a jail cell. Dr. Gottschalk, an archaeologist at a nearby temple complex to which Juan’s family had a longstanding connection, bails Juan out after he agrees to act as a sort of bodyguard to the doctor’s son Mark. Juan and Mark develop a close friendship, one so close that it is barely threatened by the appearance of Kat O’Riley, a spirited graduate student working at the site. Soon, Mark and Juan have intense feelings for Kat and she for them, but this doesn’t sit well with Mark’s mother, who has plans for her son and Eleanor, a grad student who has had her eye on Mark for some time. Meanwhile, bad things are happening in and around the site, things that seem to hint at a deeper destiny for Mark, Kat and Juan, as well as Juan’s Wolf. Talon’s novel is steeped in a deliciously dark supernatural atmosphere and full of tense action sequences intercut with scenes of lighthearted youthful palling around. While some expository sequences belong on the cutting room floor, for the most part the plot is compelling enough to keep the reader interested. Some of the youthful banter feels forced, but there is more than enough well-wrought action and wonderful creepiness to counteract the rough bits.
A gripping, macabre action story only occasionally marred by slow spots.Pub Date: April 2, 2011
ISBN: 978-1450760072
Page Count: 413
Publisher: David Talon
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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