A sweeping tale of survival and loss.
An alliance of two clans is threatened by a new enemy in the second installment of Stott’s (Impanogos, 2015, etc.) Neandertals series.
The journey of a young Neandertal girl named Kec, which began in the last book, has led to a powerful alliance between her people and the Cro-Magnons. Prosperous and peaceful, the two clans have lived in harmony now for generations. After Kec dies, the alliance stays strong, as each tribe uses their unique skills and knowledge for the well-being of all. But their peace is eventually disrupted in 3,304 B.C.E. by a power-hungry outsider named Warlog who believes that members of the alliance will eventually destroy his people. With the sudden threat of Warlog’s gathering an army and preparing to attack, the two tribes must figure out a way to stay strong in the midst of chaos. With time running out, the 20,000-year-old alliance will truly be put to the test. This series installment’s prose style is consistent with the first one in mood and tone; again, the account of gritty daily life in a prehistoric era is compelling even as it’s slightly unsettling. This time around, however, the dialogue has a bit more complexity than before, with longer sentences and descriptive words—which makes sense given the amount of time that’s passed. As a result of the time skip, there are many new faces in the cast that add interest and diversity, and several of them, such as shaman Rayloc; a historian named Sotif; and warrior Tincolad, are introduced at length in their own chapters. With the alliance hanging in the balance, the new players also bring an intriguing sense of competition to the proceedings. At one point, for instance, Sincolad, a young man who is soon to inherit his father’s chiefdom, is described as somewhat of an impostor in Rayloc’s view: “He never took his hunting lessons seriously. He was not fit to lead goats, let alone a village.” Although the book is somewhat brief—there are only seven chapters and fewer than 250 pages—it still reads like a hefty, historical epic, with events slowly boiling into a climactic finale.
A sweeping tale of survival and loss.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64669-641-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Global Summit House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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