A time-hopping tale that should appeal to readers with an interest in the prehistoric period.
This debut omnibus unites all three installments of a story that connects a pregnant woman in the late Pleistocene era with her modern-day descendant, a researcher who gets entangled in a terrorist plot.
Raven is an early human woman who is forced to join her sister’s clan after her mate dies. Her sister’s husband and clan leader, Bear, treats Raven with disdain when he is not sharing her bed. When they encounter an injured Neanderthal man—scornfully referred to as a “Longhead” by the clan—Raven uses her skills as a healer to nurse him back to health. Upon realizing she is pregnant, and that the likely father is the Longhead, not Bear, Raven flees the clan to find and hopefully join the Longheads, all the while wondering what the offspring of these two distantly related but still very different groups of people will be like: “Those heavy brows and the heavily muscled build made an unattractive combination when she struggled to imagine a female infant.” In the present day, Mark Hayek, a Parkinson’s disease researcher in whose veins runs the blood of Neanderthals thanks to a union between them and the early humans, must travel to the Levant to sort out a family inheritance. But he soon realizes that his cousin Antun may be under the sway of a terrorist group known as the Lions of the Levant and may be manipulating Mark for selfish gains. Swan is clearly heavily influenced by Jean Auel, although her writing is less explicit than that of The Clan of the Cave Bear author. Raven’s story vastly outshines that of the hapless Mark, who frequently comes off as astonishingly and annoyingly naïve. The differences between early humans and the Neanderthal Longheads should fascinate readers (At one point, Raven observes: “Stories she heard about the Longheads hadn’t prepared her to expect that the forms below would look so much like actual men. Their bodies were broader, and something was off about their arms and legs”). And the prehistoric world, filled with bison, hyenas, wolves, and two-legged predators, is portrayed in all of its harsh, hostile glory.
A time-hopping tale that should appeal to readers with an interest in the prehistoric period.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5407-8994-5
Page Count: 412
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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