A flawed book, but one that has its moments.
The fate of Anastasia, daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last Russian emperor, is at the heart of this cross-continental tale of espionage, infatuation, martyrdom, massacre and archaeology. Did the Bolsheviks kill her along with the rest of her family, as history tells us, or did she escape?
Meade, prompted by his discovery of Russian graves in the burial grounds of a small church in his native Ireland, concocts a history-based tale about an attempt to rescue the imprisoned Romanovs. The year is 1918. The man spearheading the operation is Boyle, a wealthy Irish-Canadian whose storied past includes being amateur heavyweight boxing champion in the U.S. His rescue team includes Lydia Ryan, an Irish gunrunner, and Andrev, a Russian army captain who escaped execution. The large cast of characters includes Borg, a laudanum-addicted American spy posing as a businessman who falls for the teenage Anastasia, and, in cameos, Lenin and Trotsky. The story is told by a man named Yakov to archaeologist Laura Pavlov. She tracks him down in the coastal Irish town of Collon after digging up the permafrost-preserved body of a young girl in Ekaterinburg, the Russian town where the Romanovs were killed. The girl is clutching a locket with the seal of the family. Could this be Anastasia, aka Anna Anderson? The novel is so stuffed with characters and narrative complications, not all of them compelling, that the princess' story gets a bit lost in the shuffle. And Andrev, "a truly remarkable man...who changed history," according to Yakov, doesn't make a deep impression. But give credit to Meade (The Second Messiah, 2011, etc.) for rebooting a story that, after various films, plays, mini-series and Steve Berry's 2004 novel, The Romanov Prophecy, seemed played out.
A flawed book, but one that has its moments.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1186-1
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
King fans won’t be disappointed, though most will likely prefer the scarier likes of The Shining and It.
The master of modern horror returns with a loose-knit parapsychological thriller that touches on territory previously explored in Firestarter and Carrie.
Tim Jamieson is a man emphatically not in a hurry. As King’s (The Outsider, 2018, etc.) latest opens, he’s bargaining with a flight attendant to sell his seat on an overbooked run from Tampa to New York. His pockets full, he sticks out his thumb and winds up in the backwater South Carolina town of DuPray (should we hear echoes of “pray”? Or “depraved”?). Turns out he’s a decorated cop, good at his job and at reading others (“You ought to go see Doc Roper,” he tells a local. “There are pills that will brighten your attitude”). Shift the scene to Minneapolis, where young Luke Ellis, precociously brilliant, has been kidnapped by a crack extraction team, his parents brutally murdered so that it looks as if he did it. Luke is spirited off to Maine—this is King, so it’s got to be Maine—and a secret shadow-government lab where similarly conscripted paranormally blessed kids, psychokinetic and telepathic, are made to endure the Skinnerian pain-and-reward methods of the evil Mrs. Sigsby. How to bring the stories of Tim and Luke together? King has never minded detours into the unlikely, but for this one, disbelief must be extra-willingly suspended. In the end, their forces joined, the two and their redneck allies battle the sophisticated secret agents of The Institute in a bloodbath of flying bullets and beams of mental energy (“You’re in the south now, Annie had told these gunned-up interlopers. She had an idea they were about to find out just how true that was"). It’s not King at his best, but he plays on current themes of conspiracy theory, child abuse, the occult, and Deep State malevolence while getting in digs at the current occupant of the White House, to say nothing of shadowy evil masterminds with lisps.
King fans won’t be disappointed, though most will likely prefer the scarier likes of The Shining and It.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9821-1056-7
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.
A wealthy woman with a handsome husband is preyed on by a ruthless con artist.
One day at the gym, Amber Patterson drops the magazine she’s reading between her exercise bike and that of the woman who happens to be beside her, Daphne Parrish. As she bends to pick it up, Daphne notices that it’s the publication of a cystic fibrosis foundation. What a coincidence—Daphne’s sister died of cystic fibrosis, and, why, so did Amber’s! “Slowing her pace, Amber wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. It took a lot of acting skills to cry about a sister who never existed.” Step one complete. “All she needed from Daphne was everything.” Everything, in this case, consists of Daphne’s outlandishly wealthy and blisteringly hot husband, Jackson, and all the real estate that comes with him; Daphne can definitely keep her two whiny brats. Amber hates children. But once she finds out that Daphne’s failure to give Jackson a male heir is the main source of tension in the marriage, she sees exactly how to make this work. Amber’s constant, spiteful inner monologue as she plays up to Daphne is the best thing about this book. For example, as Daphne talks about the many miseries her sister Julie went through before her death, Amber is thinking, “At least Julie had grown up in a nice house with money and parents who cared about her. Okay, she was sick and then she died. So what? A lot of people were sick. A lot of people died.…How about Amber and what she’d gone through?” Meanwhile, poor, stupid Daphne is so caught up in the joy of finally having a friend, she seems to be handing Jackson to her on a platter. Constantine’s debut novel is the work of two sisters in collaboration, and these ladies definitely know the formula.
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-266757-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
