An action-packed thriller full of authentic human drama skillfully depicted.
In this debut novel, a young blind woman participates in an experiment that could restore her sight but becomes unwittingly drawn into a dark, scientific conspiracy.
Audra Carter lost her sight when she was 10 years old in a tragic car accident that killed her mother. But it’s hard to consider this 24-year-old woman disabled because she’s so independent. She’s a DJ who spins the “coolest ambient beats” and is gifted with a high degree of “blindsight”: “The remarkable ability among some of the visually impaired to sense objects even though they have no visual field, even if totally blind.” In fact, Audra can maneuver a bicycle and fend off an assailant. Her father, Jenson, a scientist working on a possible cure for blindness, assembles a group of test subjects, including his own daughter, and administers an experiment. The experiment fails, but when the test subjects start to turn up murdered, Jenson becomes a “person of interest.” He suspects his collaborator, Stefan Vanek, is somehow involved. Then Audra is kidnapped and used as a lab rat to develop “mysterious skills” that can be employed in nefarious activities. Mallery artfully combines two genres in one book: a crime drama that follows Jenson’s race to find Audra before it’s too late, and an SF tale about the technological possibilities for expanding human potential. The author also includes a surprisingly thoughtful portrayal of the experience of blindness, rendered lucidly and poignantly: “After the accident took her sight, she often sensed something beyond the void. Unheard voices, unseen faces. Back then, it had been the seeds of nightmares, of waking screaming at night, her father rushing to her room, holding her tight.” But this is primarily a thriller, and while the action is briskly paced, Mallery does tend to favor the heavy-handedly melodramatic, an inclination evidenced by his uninhibited use of italics. Nevertheless, this tale is an intelligently conceived work, driven more than anything else by fully developed characters in the throes of real human emotions.
An action-packed thriller full of authentic human drama skillfully depicted.Pub Date: June 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64437-061-2
Page Count: 358
Publisher: Black Opal Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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