An uncompromising cautionary tale with bold notions about how the government of Earth ought to conduct itself.
Belligerent states on Earth get their just deserts from an intergalactic enforcer in Roberto’s sci-fi thriller.
Robert Benson—astrophysicist, quantum mechanics expert, professor, survivor, narrator—first experienced a visitation to Earth by an alien emissary from the Association of Planets in 1951, when he was nine years old. Though distant, the Association was troubled by Earth’s warring tendencies and sought to bring peace. But the American government was in no mood—politicians and their military-industrial cronies were getting rich off war. When the emissary leaves, the government viciously works to erase all memory of the visit. In particular, it persecutes Benson’s mother, who had become close of the emissary, Klaatu. Benson, now 70, is on hand to witness the consequences as the Association sends a destroyer to wipe out all nuclear capabilities of Earth, and a significant portion of its population. Roberto sets forth the proceedings with a good dash of retro color—a flying saucer and a monster robot complete with helmet-head and visor, “a horrible, but magnificent sight”—plenty of suspense, a disturbing canvas of the world’s nuclear landscape and a fondness for goosey modifiers (“ravening terror”), with the elements working together to develop the pleasing, melodramatic timbre of comic books. Along the way, Benson offers a handful of pointed opinions about lawyers (“the ruin of us all”), how to conduct war (Major Holloway: “[I]t should be waged as such until every last one of your enemy is destroyed…men, women, and children.” Benson: “Well said, Major Holloway.”) and the fathomless evil of politicians. This all makes him an intriguing, complicated figure, to say the least: a libertarian constitutionalist whose farewell speech—he’s off to Muurae, Klaatu’s home planet—could have been written by Orwell: “If the people of Earth fail to proceed along the path of peaceful existence, if you fail to follow the Association of Planets guidelines and regulations toward a new peaceful and prosperous Earth,” well, the peaceniks in the Association will blow you to smithereens.
An uncompromising cautionary tale with bold notions about how the government of Earth ought to conduct itself.Pub Date: March 27, 2010
ISBN: 978-1450063944
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2010
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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