A fun space romp that’s equal parts goofiness and grandeur.
Melbourne’s sci-fi adventure stars an accountant swept up in the battle against a reality-altering weapon.
In the year 20018, Percival Gynt is an accountant on the planet Sanctuary-8. As he waits for the morning train, a beautiful woman approaches. She asks him, “Are you honest and clever and kind...and does danger always seem to find you?” He eventually answers, “Yes.” She kisses him, apologizes, and steals his bowler hat. Before he can give chase, two police officers take him into custody. They bring him to a government agent named Fred, who explains that the woman who kissed him is Millicent Lamb, the former nanny of an 11-year-old named Kevin. Kevin is missing, and Fred knows that Percival—last survivor of the Gynt Massacre—has the guts to retrieve the boy. The first catch is that he must team up with Officer Um (a froglike Indulian). The second catch is that Kevin embodies an ancient evil known as the Rider, which must not be reunited with the Engine of Armageddon, a machine that can (and does) erase large swaths of reality. Percival will cross paths with the enchanting Tarot (aka Millicent), Aryan soldiers of the Nth Realm, and Matthew “Mouse” Holden, former apprentice to the magician Illuminari, whose death began this crisis. For audiences who like their space operas thoroughly daffy, author Melbourne (Archenemies, 2007) offers an all-you-can-read buffet of batty goodness. Like Douglas Adams, Melbourne’s ideas are off-kilter and funny, but—as importantly—his execution is off-kilter and funny, too. One scene, for example, features alien blobs called Fummers that are “humming a tune that sounded strangely like that old Earth ditty, ‘Hey Ya.’ ” The romance between Percival and Tarot is as charming as it is torturous. Elsewhere, mentions of Grimsouls (reanimated killing machines) being the product of pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline skewer a future in which corporations join humanity in colonizing space. Longtime sci-fi fans should appreciate Melbourne’s creative endurance as he crafts an ever twisting plot that lets dust settle on none of his characters, including the legendarily “not dead” Vargoth Gor.
A fun space romp that’s equal parts goofiness and grandeur.Pub Date: May 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9998748-0-6
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Ruesday Books
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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