Ambitious sci-fi ideas hobbled by salacious wandering.
Allen (The Divine Miracle, 2011) offers the first in aplanned series of five YA time-travel adventures.
Clancy Millstone is a wealthy computer scientist whose wife, Rachel, recently passed away. He lives with his 14-year-old son, Richie, in their Jacksonville, Florida, mansion. One day, Clancy asks Richie’s friend Travis and cousin Matt to stop by to cheer Richie up, as he’s been depressed since his mother’s death. They take him out for pizza, where they meet up with more teens,and the large, cheery group later heads back to the mansion for a sleepover. The next day, the door to Clancy’s workshop is found open, and the kids discover an enormous vehicle inside. After they board it, they watch a video recorded by Clancy, who tells them that they’re about to embark on a time-travel adventure. The time machine is well-stocked with food, clothing, spare parts—everything Richie and his friends might need. Most astoundingly, it’s powered by a platinum water crystal—and, like any technology, the crystal can be used for good or evil. Soon, Richie and his crew embark on a dangerous voyage through time and, eventually, space. Allen’s elaborately framed narrative starts with an elderly Richie meeting his younger self and delves into the intriguing questions central to many time-travel tales: Are events set in stone, or is time fluid and changeable? He offers a world that’s rich in detail and writes most compellingly about the time machine itself: “As long as the platinum crystal was submerged in water at a certain depth, it would produce power almost indefinitely.” Allen’s penchant for such detail, however, also makes the dialogue cumbersome and the prose repetitive: People constantly speak with a “wry grin” or with “rolled eyes.” The novel is also distractingly preoccupied with exploring its characters’ sexuality, which has its place in YA fiction but not when it overshadows the plot; phrases like “lube our tubes” and “horse grade manhood” may turn away casual readers.
Ambitious sci-fi ideas hobbled by salacious wandering.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1625161765
Page Count: 574
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2014
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
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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