A hardware-light sci-fi kidnapping tale with a righteous cyborg army having mom and dad’s backs.
After an African nation develops advanced mental abilities, its leading citizens must thwart a mass hostage-taking by Iranian fanatics determined to learn the secret of the process.
Robin’s (Libator, 2013) sequel imagines a tiny country in late 21st-century Africa (bordering Somalia and Kenya) that—like the Marvel Comics imaginary sub-Saharan kingdom of Wakanda—has made astounding strides forward in technology. Specifically, the inhabitants of Libator can upgrade and advance human intelligence. With proper brain enhancement, the nation’s citizens fight as supersoldiers and/or communicate telepathically (and, to a limited extent, read the minds of ordinary mortals). With Libator’s secret revealed in the previous novel, the country is now eyed greedily by Iran. The Islamic revolutionary extremists (perhaps in the author’s mirroring of the Iran hostage crisis of the 1970s) kidnap 50 brain-enhanced but helpless Libator children, demanding that the nation’s doctors share medical secrets of the neural process in the name of Allah, or else. Despite the sci-fi trappings, most of the story hinges on spying and diplomatic negotiations—more skulduggery than visionary skull re-engineering. John Thompson and Stephanie Li, husband-and-wife characters from Libator, are now the parents of an abducted boy; they don “Persian” disguises for a coordinated, secret commando rescue operation behind enemy lines. At last, in the rousing final act, the drone-robot AIs and futuristic military weapons of plucky Libator come heavily and effectively into play. Almost nothing is uttered about the rest of the world’s political community of 2079 and its reaction to the augmented nation. Even allowing for the vagaries of a future setting, daily details of life under the theocratic, militant jackboot in Iran are flat and sketchy. Apart from the place names and the preponderance of bestial and rape-happy men who richly deserve to get their arrogant, religious/superstitious butts kicked, the marauders could well have been Klingons or Ruritanians.
A hardware-light sci-fi kidnapping tale with a righteous cyborg army having mom and dad’s backs.Pub Date: March 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4575-6193-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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