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
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
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