An uplifting sci-fi work about mankind’s origins and ultimate destination.
Dimond’s (The Ascension of Mharn, 2012) ambitious sci-fi novel asks: Is humanity ready to join the citizenry of the cosmos?
After WIL, an ancient alien visitor, saves the life of a scientist’s son, WIL invites the scientist, Michael; his son, David; and Michael’s new love, Janet, on a journey of enlightenment. They experience a mind-expanding ride aboard the Corillion, a ship with almost limitless abilities to move through time and space, and meet Mharn, an alien student from the Kingdom of the Voices and the wise, beautiful spirit, Pim. They soon learn about mind sharing and spirit transfer. Mharn temporarily transforms Michael into a non-corporeal being and helps move a population of once-troubled and reckless spirit beings from an asteroid hurtling toward Earth to their home planet, Gena. After Michael and Mharn help stabilize Gena’s society and culture, Michael’s mind achieves a new level of consciousness and Mharn comes of age as the Kingdom’s new Light Prince. The author skillfully tackles deeply ingrained beliefs about the world’s origins; for example, Munkhan, an alien spirit who has occupied human bodies for centuries, challenges Darwin’s explanation of biodiversity, suggesting that the current theories of the origins of the human race are “parochial, theoretical, outdated and incomplete.” Munkhan later suggests that mankind’s future can be optimistic and egalitarian, and that it will develop a “single language in 130 years and a single voice in 150 years.” Over the course of the novel, Dimond serves up a lesson that the rise of the human race into celestial maturity will ultimately be governed by how we deal with choices and boundaries. Although the novel deals with profound ideas, some chapters are a bit overlong, such as one dealing with the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex, and could have been truncated to a single paragraph. That said, the beginning and ending chapters have plenty of momentum, when Michael and his entourage first experience alien technology and philosophy and, later, with the introduction of Munkhan and his ideas.
An uplifting sci-fi work about mankind’s origins and ultimate destination.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2010
ISBN: 978-1453520833
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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