A familiar but entertaining, action-laden monster tale.
In this sci-fi debut, an amnesiac 24th-century woman hones her powers to battle menacing creatures in a ravaged Utah.
Lia awakens in an abandoned store, remembering nothing beyond her first name, including how she got there. She has apparent surgical scars all over her body and signs of restraints on her wrists and ankles. Outside the store is a 7-foot-tall clawed beast that pursues her. After a lengthy chase, Lia discovers a bladed device called a kynari that, unlike bullets, can penetrate the creature’s armored skin. But after their bloody confrontation has seemingly ended, the fierce predator uses its tendrils to somehow bond with an unwitting Lia. She later realizes that, armed with the kynari, she’s quite powerful, but at a price: The beast, which she dubs the Leader, is a voice in her head that occasionally takes over her body. Similar lanky creatures have devastated Utah, which Lia ultimately attributes to a virus that someone created at a biotech lab in the state. She eventually comes across potential allies in a small group of soldiers, who have witnessed the beasts infecting humans that manage to survive attacks. Lia and the others try to save humanity by finding a cure. Ramsay’s series opener shares more than a passing resemblance to the Resident Evil video game/movie series, particularly the films. But while readers may have seen similar monsters and desolate landscapes before, the author loads his tale with exhilarating action. The story’s momentum likewise offsets the violence, as Ramsay doesn’t linger on visceral imagery like severed appendages. Pithy writing aids in delivering a visual narrative: “Due to the angle of her attack she could only rupture its lower jaw cleanly, so she deftly removed it then slammed it hard into its skull.” Lia’s mysterious backstory is resolved by the end, but it’s part of an unexpected plot turn. The twist answers questions in this book while starting an entirely new direction for the sequel.
A familiar but entertaining, action-laden monster tale.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-77508-336-8
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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