Superb rawhide shoot-’em-ups from Leonard’s early years that not only stand tall beside his bestselling crime fiction (Out of Sight, 1996, etc.) but might even revive the moribund western literary genre. Leonard’s first nine published novels were westerns, one of which became the creaky Paul Newman’s 1967 film Hombre. While supporting himself as an advertising copywriter, Leonard developed his steely-eyed, resourceful but romantically compassionate American heroes, his feisty females, the villainous authority figures, menacing oddballs, and fast-talking nincompoops that he later transferred so successfully to the contemporary urban environments of Detroit, Miami, New Orleans, and Hollywood. Though Leonard’s rugged western scouts talk the talk and appreciate the difference between a Sharps and Winchester rifle, there is a timeless excitement in these spare, tauntingly wrought scenes of macho confrontation against a harsh, lawless landscape that brings out the best and worst in everyone. Like the stories of Raymond Chandler, these 19 episodic tales, played out among the dusty, Apache-haunted canyons between the aptly named towns of Inspiration and Contention, are highly polished set pieces, replete with the winking humor and masculine terror that lack only the escalating sense of violence and prolonged tension of the longer books. A stage robbery goes awry when a renegade Mescalero decides to test his manhood (“Trouble at Rindo’s Station”); unbearable guilt makes Bob Valdez go from good guy to bad when he’s forced to kill an innocent man (“Only Good Ones”); Amelia Darck, wife of a US Cavalry colonel, stares down an Apache bandit (“The Colonel’s Lady”); and, in a long story that prefigures the heart-stopping climaxes of Leonard’s crime novels, Pat Brennan, a luckless, unarmed cowboy, valiantly rescues a woman abandoned by her craven husband from a trio of homicidal kidnappers. A list of publishing credits, or an introduction indicating what magazines or editors nurtured the master’s career, might have helped future biographers. Still, these lean and stirring action stories are among the best of Leonard’s long career.
Pub Date: Sept. 8, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-32386-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers...
Exploring humankind's place in the universe and the nature of humanity, many of the stories in this stellar collection focus on how technological advances can impact humanity’s evolutionary journey.
Chiang's (Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002) second collection begins with an instant classic, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” which won Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novelette in 2008. A time-travel fantasy set largely in ancient Baghdad, the story follows fabric merchant Fuwaad ibn Abbas after he meets an alchemist who has crafted what is essentially a time portal. After hearing life-changing stories about others who have used the portal, he decides to go back in time to try to right a terrible wrong—and realizes, too late, that nothing can erase the past. Other standout selections include “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” a story about a software tester who, over the course of a decade, struggles to keep a sentient digital entity alive; “The Great Silence,” which brilliantly questions the theory that humankind is the only intelligent race in the universe; and “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny,” which chronicles the consequences of machines raising human children. But arguably the most profound story is "Exhalation" (which won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Short Story), a heart-rending message and warning from a scientist of a highly advanced, but now extinct, race of mechanical beings from another universe. Although the being theorizes that all life will die when the universes reach “equilibrium,” its parting advice will resonate with everyone: “Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.”
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers in a big way.Pub Date: May 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-94788-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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