Still, it's a rousing adventure, and Newbury/Hobbes fans will revel.
Third Victorian occult/steampunk adventure for Queen Victoria's special agent Sir Maurice Newbury, his doughty sidekick Veronica Hobbes and their bluff, tough counterpart, Chief Inspector Sir Charles Bainbridge of Scotland Yard (The Osiris Ritual, 2009, etc.).
Their latest case begins with a corpse: apparently that of Edwin Sykes, burglar extraordinaire, whom Bainbridge suspects of being behind a string of unusual thefts. Newbury, dragged from an opium den—he thinks it gives him psychic powers, and he's also consumed with the suspicion that Veronica is an informer—confirms that the body is who it seems to be. Yet there are inconsistencies, and when another crime comes to light, done in Sykes' inimitable manner (he uses a spider-like machine to drill through doors and obstacles), all three are baffled. Veronica, meanwhile, desperately worries about her frail sister Amelia, who suffers from uncontrollable seizures during which she experiences prophetic visions. Presently Amelia enjoys the care of Dr. Lucien Fabian of the Grayling Institute. All charm on the surface, Fabian is secretly doing horrid experiments on Amelia and drawing up delusional plans based on her utterances. Another complication, and somehow implicated in the Sykes affair, is Sir Enoch Graves and his Bastion Society, whose insanely chauvinistic theories involve far more than deadly mechanical spiders. Worst of all, Veronica really is informing on Newbury to Queen Victoria, a dying, mad hulk kept artificially alive by one of Fabian's repulsive machines. More steampunk than occult this time—one character, for instance, has steam-powered artificial knees—and rather too many gloating megalomaniacs for comfort.
Still, it's a rousing adventure, and Newbury/Hobbes fans will revel.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2775-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
Too much puzzle-solving, not enough suspense.
Video-game players embrace the quest of a lifetime in a virtual world; screenwriter Cline’s first novel is old wine in new bottles.
The real world, in 2045, is the usual dystopian horror story. So who can blame Wade, our narrator, if he spends most of his time in a virtual world? The 18-year-old, orphaned at 11, has no friends in his vertical trailer park in Oklahoma City, while the OASIS has captivating bells and whistles, and it’s free. Its creator, the legendary billionaire James Halliday, left a curious will. He had devised an elaborate online game, a hunt for a hidden Easter egg. The finder would inherit his estate. Old-fashioned riddles lead to three keys and three gates. Wade, or rather his avatar Parzival, is the first gunter (egg-hunter) to win the Copper Key, first of three. Halliday was obsessed with the pop culture of the 1980s, primarily the arcade games, so the novel is as much retro as futurist. Parzival’s great strength is that he has absorbed all Halliday’s obsessions; he knows by heart three essential movies, crossing the line from geek to freak. His most formidable competitors are the Sixers, contract gunters working for the evil conglomerate IOI, whose goal is to acquire the OASIS. Cline’s narrative is straightforward but loaded with exposition. It takes a while to reach a scene that crackles with excitement: the meeting between Parzival (now world famous as the lead contender) and Sorrento, the head of IOI. The latter tries to recruit Parzival; when he fails, he issues and executes a death threat. Wade’s trailer is demolished, his relatives killed; luckily Wade was not at home. Too bad this is the dramatic high point. Parzival threads his way between more ’80s games and movies to gain the other keys; it’s clever but not exciting. Even a romance with another avatar and the ultimate “epic throwdown” fail to stir the blood.
Too much puzzle-solving, not enough suspense.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-88743-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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