The closest parallels to this novel are movies like Inception and comic books featuring the Justice League of America.
Masterton (Fire Spirit, 2010, etc.) continues his Night Warriors series by tossing half-a-dozen untried Warriors at a nefarious 12th-century amputee monk.
Something is definitely wrong at Cleveland’s Griffin House Hotel. In Room 717, a disembodied voice predicts doom for charity worker Katie Kercheval. Police detective Walter Wisocky warns Rhodajane Berry, who’s come to town for her grandmother’s funeral, to report any odd doings in Room 309. Record promoter Lincoln Walker is attacked by a wraithlike figure who sets Room 104 afire. Rooms 237 and 239, where twin teen singers Kiera and Kieran Kaiser are staying, keep turning into an open field. The problem, cabdriver John Dauphin patiently explains, isn’t just with the hotel, it’s with these guests, all of whom are unwittingly sensitive to the dreams with which the walls have been infused ever since Cleveland Flats rapist/killer Gordon Veitch polluted them back in the 1930s. And the evil of these dreams goes back even further to the Cistercian monk Brother Albrecht, who’s been plotting dream-borne revenge and reunion with his beloved ever since his arms and legs were amputated in punishment for adultery 900 years ago. The first third of this installment (Night Wars, 2006, etc.) hints at these developments in some truly creepy ways. The rest—revealing their superhero destinies to the Griffin House guests (refashioned as An-Gryferai, Xyrena, Zebenjo’Yyx, Jekkalon and Jemexxa) and arming them to enter the dream world and do battle with Veitch, now calling himself Mago Verde, and Brother Albrecht—is more routine action stuff.
The closest parallels to this novel are movies like Inception and comic books featuring the Justice League of America.Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7278-6997-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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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