This intriguing but uneven drama will appeal to fans of family epics and equine adventures.
This series opener blends an adventure, thriller, and romance centering on a woman’s struggles to overcome tragedy and establish a successful stud farm.
The story starts in Rhodesia during the Bush War, which leads to the formation of Zimbabwe under Black majority rule. As White farmers, Ivan and Margaret Johns are under attack by Robert Mugabe’s forces, which seek to claim White-owned land as part of the revolution. The couple try to protect their daughter, Melonie, and their Blue Winds estate from the encroaching war. But Melonie is abducted in a raid by former Blue Winds servant Solomon Tlale and abused by her captors. Through her own determination, Melonie escapes and is reunited with her parents, who decide to sell Blue Winds and move in with Margaret’s mother, Iris Paige, in South Africa. Melonie hits her stride there, riding and training horses on Iris’ stud farm, and eventually takes over the operation, producing prizewinning racehorses. Still traumatized by her abuse, Melonie tries to find love with Gary Whitaker, a handsome new trainer on the farm. While Melonie and her family endure more tragedy as they lose many people close to them over the years, they are anchored by their business success and Melonie’s marriage to Gary. But back in Zimbabwe, Solomon harbors a grudge and plots revenge. Robinson draws on her experiences living in Rhodesia and her work with horses to create a vivid landscape of southern Africa. Her descriptions are rich, as when she portrays a government office: “The inside was painted in a dreary cream colour, with enamel paint so shiny you could almost recognise yourself in its reflection.” And fans of horses and horse racing will delight in her detailed depictions of the farm and track. The narrative is fairly clear, but there are some missteps. A couple of times in the story, Robinson starts a scene after the major action has happened, which is confusing. In an important scene in which Melonie is assaulted, readers only see the aftermath, and it is the first time her attacker has been introduced. The Johns family members, especially Ivan, are also staunchly anti–majority rule and sometimes use slurs like munts and gooks to describe Black revolutionaries, which makes the characters feel less sympathetic.
This intriguing but uneven drama will appeal to fans of family epics and equine adventures.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781805410508
Page Count: 507
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
