Morally conflicted Nathan’s second adventure (Basilisk, 2009, etc.) is a fast-paced, gruesome tale sure to bring chills to...
Strange mythological creatures are terrorizing Philadelphia.
Crypto-zoologist Nathan Underhill has been using ancient treatises in his attempt to re-create fabulous creatures whose cells may contain cures for many diseases. He and his lab team, Kavita and Aarif, have just succeeded in recreating a phoenix when the company supporting his research, a firm whose limited sense of adventure is exhausted, cuts them off. When Nathan burns his hand, he uses the cell-therapy treatment to cure himself in order to demonstrate that the therapy works. All the while, Theodor Zauber, a mad scientist’s equally mad son, is pressing Nathan to help him sustain life in a huge collection of gargoyles that were turned to stone by 13th-century alchemists. Zauber’s father had found a method to restore these unfortunates to flesh and blood, but it only lasts a short time, and it poses other problems. For example, the creatures can prolong their lives only by eating the hearts of humans. Well aware of this wrinkle, Zauber threatens many more deaths unless Nathan helps him. Desperate to find the cache of gargoyles, Nathan must work with the police, who’ve been investigating several cases in which huge stone statues have killed people when they crashed to earth, in a last-ditch effort to protect humanity.
Morally conflicted Nathan’s second adventure (Basilisk, 2009, etc.) is a fast-paced, gruesome tale sure to bring chills to receptive spines.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8072-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2011
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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