A sweet story about thinking of other’s needs before your own.
In this gently fantastical YA novel, an angel visits a girl on Christmas Eve and bestows a unique gift.
Jamie Mayer is a well-meaning 8-year-old girl who desperately wants a laptop for Christmas. Instead, she’s disappointed to receive a wooden angel from her father. After Jamie says she’ll only believe in Christmas if she can witness the Nativity for herself, the angel comes to life in all his cigar-smoking glory. He introduces himself as Gabriel (Gabe to his friends) and offers to grant her wish. The story of a slightly selfish child learning a lesson on Christmas Eve is familiar, as is the character of a gruff but loving angel. Similarly, the numerous pop-culture references become a bit tiring, especially because Morgan seems intent on featuring as many dead celebrities as he can—biblical figures, former U.S. presidents and a certain legendary rock ’n’ roll singer—until a funny idea is stretched too thin to support the gentle humor. However, the story has some impressive touches, including Gabriel’s insistence that Jamie has to really want to go on the journey; her autonomy then lends the story more weight than it would have otherwise had. Also, Jamie’s interactions with shepherds and wise men are emotionally resonant, and the relationship between Jamie and her sister is believable. While terms of derision like “dorkmeister” are used too often, the underlying mix of love and irritation between the two girls feels true while adding a realistic foundation that helps ground the mild fantasy. The family structure as a whole is refreshing: Jamie’s mother is a night nurse whose work demands long hours away from home, while her father’s job (computing in a home office) places him in more of a domestic role. The father’s obsession with celebrating Christmas sets the stage for the yuletide journey, while the mother’s dedication to her work underscores the author’s overall theme of self-sacrifice, which connects the whole family to the story of Jamie’s growing maturity.
A sweet story about thinking of other’s needs before your own.Pub Date: May 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-1477205143
Page Count: 150
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.
A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.
Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374172
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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