Stylistic oddities aside, this book is never anything less than entertaining.
A hapless theatre worker becomes one of the nocturnal world’s most powerful vampires.
Galloway’s debut vampire novella wastes no time with exposition; the story opens as the protagonist, a theatre maintenance man, is feasted on by a gang of vampire bats in the subbasement. It’s a strange scene, especially given that it’s related in first-person. Bats pin the narrator down with the strength of oxen, while the larger leader of the group stalks around as he waits for the coup de grace. In a last ditch attempt to assert himself before death, the narrator sinks his teeth into the lead bat, unintentionally absorbing the power of one of the most ancient vampires in the world. Out of pity, he then feeds a bat named General, who clues him in to the workings of the bat order and eventually becomes the hero’s right-hand bat. The powerful vampire bat whose soul the narrator absorbed, however, is brother to an ancient evil, the king bat; he is none too pleased to hear of his brother’s fate. Conveniently, all vampire bats are linked telepathically; the narrator is aware that, in Romania, the king bat is assembling a force of 8,000 bats to traverse the Atlantic and destroy this upstart and his new crew. As he awaits their arrival, the narrator feasts on animals to absorb their strength and on doctors to absorb their knowledge. He also turns his theatre co-workers into vampires, with little protest. There’s very little of the existential struggle found in most modern vampire tales—everyone here is more than happy to become undead. The hero hardly thinks twice about most of his actions, which makes him oddly likable. It’s a wild romp, and at times bathetic: “The high-powered vacuums in their mouths began to drink my blood. This was really pissing me off.” There are also some awkward and distracting grammar mistakes. But the fate of the novel’s hero is bolder than most commercial novels would dare. Readers will delight in this wild, often wacky new addition to the vampire mythos.
Stylistic oddities aside, this book is never anything less than entertaining.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2011
ISBN: 978-1465386366
Page Count: 76
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Fast-paced, imaginative fun. May Kurt and crew survive, as there’s a good series to continue.
The latest maritime thriller in the NUMA series starring Kurt Austin (The Rising Sea, 2018, etc.)
In 1968, the French submarine Minerve sinks without a trace in the Mediterranean. In the present day, an oil rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing and badly injuring many workers. Enter Kurt Austin, head of Special Projects at the National Underwater Marine Agency. Kurt leads a team that assists in marine emergencies, so they respond to the Mayday call and quickly find a stream of underwater flame—escaping gas is burning in the water, down “as far as the eye could see.” It’s a fire that needs no oxygen, a phenomenon Kurt’s team has never seen. NUMA calls the disaster clear-cut sabotage, and Kurt’s assignment is to find the guilty party. Said party is Tessa Franco, CEO of Novum Industria, who is busily sabotaging oil production around the world. She wants to promote her new fuel cell to replace “this mad reliance on fossil fuels” and become even more stinking rich than she already is. She has “infected half the world’s major oil fields” by pumping oil-eating bacteria into them, rendering them useless. “She is the oil crisis,” Kurt tells the president. Kurt's and Tessa’s teams race to locate the Minerve, which may have critical genetic research Israel commissioned half a century ago. There are great action scenes underwater and on the surface, where Tessa’s seaplane, the Monarch, is almost as big as a 747. Rotten to the core, Tessa wants her lackeys to “get rid of Austin once and for all.” Her odds look mighty good considering the firepower she brings to bear.
Fast-paced, imaginative fun. May Kurt and crew survive, as there’s a good series to continue.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1902-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
Fans of Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins will find this comfortingly familiar despite (or maybe because of?) the shocks and...
In Pinborough’s (Behind Her Eyes, 2018, etc.) twisty, decade-spanning, multivoiced thriller, everyone has secrets: teenager Ava; her mom, Lisa; and Lisa’s best friend, Marilyn.
On the surface, all three women fulfill the roles expected of them, and they support and love one another, but they don’t truly know each other. Ava, a competitive swimmer, is finishing up her exams and sneaking around with her first boyfriend while overly protective mom Lisa is about to clinch a big contract at work—and maybe even go on a date with a handsome millionaire client. Marilyn has been dealing with headaches at home, but she’s still game for a shopping trip to outfit Lisa for that big date. Soon, however, they will discover that someone else in their lives has a secret much darker than any they carry. This person is a murderer who is stalking a childhood friend who, they believe, betrayed their deepest trust. There are a lot of plot twists and reveals within the novel, some of which are surprising, some of which are expected. Pinborough weaves several different time periods and several different narrative voices to create layers of character and conflict, but the characters are types often found in psychological thrillers, and while their problems are often relatable, at least at first, they aren’t particularly engaging. It’s clear which decisions, and which silences, are going to get them into trouble, and yet, as people do, they carry on anyway. The one element that sets Pinborough’s novel apart from the slew of similar thrillers is the emphasis on female empowerment and the power of female relationships. These women need no one to save them, no knights in shining armor or handsome cops. As Marilyn succinctly puts it, “Fuck. That. Shit.”
Fans of Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins will find this comfortingly familiar despite (or maybe because of?) the shocks and turns along the way.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-285679-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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