Not the strongest espionage tale in the series, but still an entertaining one.
In this seventh installment of the Spies Lie series, a talented young hacker seeks revenge on behalf of her dead boyfriend.
After Charlette DeSpain’s boyfriend Martin Burns is falsely accused of stealing government secrets and meets a suspicious end in prison, she devotes her entire existence to becoming an ace computer hacker and using those skills to clear his name posthumously. Frustrated by the lack of interest in her findings, “she decided to try anything she thought had a chance of working, even if there were side casualties. They all deserved to die.” When Charlette—now known as the CypherGhost—tries to hack and crash a plane containing fellow hacking genius Ann Silbey Sashakovich, Ann thwarts the attempt using her own special abilities. Despite initially being at odds, the two young women team up when the government rounds up computer hackers—black and white hats alike—and sends them to concentration camps in the West (“There are two in the Nevada desert, three in the Utah mountains, five in Wyoming, and one in northern Arizona”). But despite a steamy romance with Ann, the devious CypherGhost may not be the ally she appears to be. When Ann and the CypherGhost both swallow highly advanced nanodevices that allow them to hack from inside their own heads, the stakes quickly escalate. Kane (ProxyWar, 2016, etc.) has produced his most outlandish espionage saga yet, and while one doesn’t doubt that the purported former spy has drawn on some elements of truth for his latest book, it feels much less grounded in reality than the previous series installments. Kane’s novels are always packed with enough terrifying detail to feel at least moderately plausible, if not horrifyingly prescient, but once his all-star hacker team deviates from computers and manipulates members’ brains, things start to feel less like Robert Ludlum and more like The Matrix. Nevertheless, the colorful cast of characters remains as engaging as ever, even as the story goes increasingly off the rails.
Not the strongest espionage tale in the series, but still an entertaining one.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9862321-9-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: The Swift Shadow Group
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2017
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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