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WHEN GODS WAR

Name: WHEN GODS WAR
Author: F. Howard Billings

ROMAN CANDLE

by F. Howard Billings ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

A simplistic sci-fi saga.

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In this debut novel, a strange, young, grassy, and lopsided planet named Zeon faces catastrophe.

On Zeon, there were once large treelike organisms called timbers (long since chopped down, but still mined for necessary materials). The planet’s dominant feature is an enormous volcanic mountain, Altai, nearly twice the height of Everest. There are two major groups of large-eyed, big-footed humanoids, arranged around two smallish seas: the Nearside Zeons and the Farside Zeons (“In the Nearside tribe, males have dark brown fur and females, light brown. This is in contrast to the Farside Zeons which are dark red and light red and want nothing to do with Nearsiders”). Both tribes make many uses of ocean scum in their daily lives. Nearside fishermen Kairn and Trillio are among the many Zeons (Nearside and Farside) caught in a disaster as their nearby planetary neighbor, Tareon, slips into a collision course with their home world. The Zeons have a bizarre technology, perhaps held over from past ages, that permits them to Launch—to fly off their world and into space—but it is fraught with peril. As Tareon draws closer and the Zeons are forced into underground bunkers, who will survive the impending doom? Billings’ entire novel is written in the present tense, with occasional line drawings included as illustrations. The story offers intriguing worldbuilding and plenty of action. But characters are thin, trapped in a horrific situation that would reduce even the most three-dimensional personalities to little more than survival mode. Character names are blunt, often monosyllabic, and odd (for example, “Scepter,” “Torq,” and “Kairn”). Place names like Zeon evoke anime, old sci-fi TV shows, and real-world religions; references to prosaic Earthly items such as football, Roman candles, and New York City are freely made by the inelegant narrative voice. Dialogue is serviceable at best (“Scepter, our families are gone and Alor and I are prepared to start the unknown so that each of you may live on”). The tale builds to a climax that is meant to be grandly inspiring but is instead uneasy and unfulfilling.

A simplistic sci-fi saga.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: May 16, 2018

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

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Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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THEN SHE WAS GONE

by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

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Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.