A fast-paced time-travel tale that, ultimately, can’t escape the genre.
In the first volume of the time-traveling Paradox series, a team of brilliant scientists and highly trained law enforcement officers fight to keep vigilantes from destroying history.
In the near future, Dr. Nora Hamilton is the gorgeous wunderkind of the Rabbit Hole Time Travel Company, the first corporation to corner the market on recreational time travel. While studying at MIT, Nora develops a working relationship with her equally brilliant professor, Marcus Locke. Together, they build Rabbit Hole up from nothing and become fabulously wealthy in the process. It is a dream job for Nora until New Year’s Eve 2024, when a trip goes wrong. Nora soon discovers that she’s been tracked for months by an ex-Marine named Nick Canton, and he has some news for her: A group known as the Rippers are blowing through history, changing what they please to suit their own agenda. To make matters worse, they’ve kidnapped Marcus, the one man who understands the intricacies of time travel even better than Nora. Nick works for Paradox Force, an underground agency tasked with keeping time travel safe, and now they need Nora’s help to stop the Rippers. As she and Nick grow close, Rippers alter the course of civilization throughout time, and Nick and Nora can’t be sure what is “real” history and what has been altered. They’ll have to work fast in the present—and the past—in order to secure the future. The novel moves at a quick clip, with short chapters and a snappy plot that keeps the pages turning. Certain clichés abound, however. The romantic relationship between Nick and Nora is predictable, and the book doesn’t add as much as it could to pre-existing time-travel narratives, focusing instead on the nature of the so-called butterfly effect. Nevertheless, readers with a cursory knowledge of history will enjoy seeing Nick and Nora struggle to remember what is fact and what is fiction.
A fast-paced time-travel tale that, ultimately, can’t escape the genre.Pub Date: July 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0989662208
Page Count: 252
Publisher: GarrettSmithBooks
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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