by Ignatius Ryan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 7, 2015
A familiar post-apocalyptic survivalist epic, but it’s told with uncommon power and passion.
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Concluding a futuristic trilogy, this novel takes aging hero Elliott Eastman out of his post-apocalyptic colony in Idaho and on an often violent quest east through a devastated America in search of other surviving communities.
This is a blood-and-thunder capper (after America 2038, 2013, etc.) to Ryan’s story starring Eastman, a former Army Ranger and reform-minded Colorado politician. In previous books, Eastman saw America—and the planet—convulse through what he calls the “Great Rendering,” a perfect storm of climate-change drought/flooding, wealth inequality, deficient government, food shortages, rapacious Wall Street traders, and civil unrest. It resulted in total anarchy, rioting, catastrophe, and mutant predator animals overtaking humanity, practically to extinction. Eastman managed to persevere with his family and some 3,000 followers in an isolated stronghold of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in a sustainable community harvesting lake algae to eat (the green stuff, fortunately, possesses restorative powers that keep the now-88-year-old Eastman fairly spry). With years since the last straggler-refugee came into their midst, Eastman ponders whether any other organized outposts of humanity persist. A large expedition led by his most capable son, Elliott the Younger, known as “E,” follows rivers east toward Missouri—and discovers pockets of vicious fiefdoms and psycho holdouts, including formidably armed ex-military men who take slave labor from revenant Native American tribes in the hinterlands. While E, Eastman, and their comrades encounter all kinds of carnivores, human and otherwise, betrayal back home in Idaho takes on a disastrous, familiar shape, and history threatens to repeat itself within North America’s last functioning society. Characters are robustly drawn, and the crosscutting chapters are practically cinematic, as Ryan turns the screws on his gallery of heroes and villains. While concluding the saga, the author avoids a sense of wrapping up everyone in a happily-ever-after package. There is a strong sensation of the beginning of a new world that does not minimize the birth pangs, the scars of the past, or the struggles that lay ahead. With the exception of the final paragraphs, Ryan does not preach on a soapbox about pathologies that laid civilization low; nor does he indulge in the guns, guts, and God populism that often typifies survivalist fiction.
A familiar post-apocalyptic survivalist epic, but it’s told with uncommon power and passion.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5174-1637-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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