There are no heroes here, but even possible enemies are portrayed with compassion and complexity.
Originally published in Arabic in 2008 and short-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, Kachachi’s war novel follows the internalized musings of an Iraqi-born American working as a translator for U.S. military forces after Saddam Hussein’s fall.
When the Iraq War begins, 30-ish Zeina has been living in Detroit for 15 years. Her Eastern Orthodox family emigrated from Baghdad after her father’s arrest and torture when she was a teen. Although her well-educated parents have never fully adjusted to their less privileged lives in exile, Zeina feels at home as an Arab American: Her father instilled in her a love and knowledge of Arab literature and her friends are mostly Arab; but her beer-loving boyfriend, Calvin, is White and Zeina is steeped in American pop culture, using movie titles to define specific moments in her tale. Zeina signs up as a translator for reasons patriotic—despair over 9/11—as well as financial—up to $186,000 per year in salary. But returning to her homeland and reuniting with her fiercely nationalistic, anti-American maternal grandmother, Rahma, make Zeina question her divided loyalties. She feels kinship with other American soldiers on the various bases where she's posted, willingly accompanying them on raids. Yet she falls passionately in love with Muhaymen, an active member of a Shiite militia group fighting the Americans. Although sharpened memories pull her toward her Iraqi roots, Zeina returns to Detroit between her two tours of duty only to feel like a “dog with two homes.” During her second tour, she realizes the divide between her and Muhaymen, a newly devout Muslim, is unbreachable. The novel’s narration, in part by Zeina and in part by a writer-self “sitting shoulder to shoulder by my side” who wants to villainize Zeina on Rahma’s behalf, represents her existential struggle as an American, an Iraqi, an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and a woman.
There are no heroes here, but even possible enemies are portrayed with compassion and complexity.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62371-868-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Interlink
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.
When a freak dust storm brings a manned mission to Mars to an unexpected close, an astronaut who is left behind fights to stay alive. This is the first novel from software engineer Weir.
One minute, astronaut Mark Watney was with his crew, struggling to make it out of a deadly Martian dust storm and back to the ship, currently in orbit over Mars. The next minute, he was gone, blown away, with an antenna sticking out of his side. The crew knew he'd lost pressure in his suit, and they'd seen his biosigns go flat. In grave danger themselves, they made an agonizing but logical decision: Figuring Mark was dead, they took off and headed back to Earth. As it happens, though, due to a bizarre chain of events, Mark is very much alive. He wakes up some time later to find himself stranded on Mars with a limited supply of food and no way to communicate with Earth or his fellow astronauts. Luckily, Mark is a botanist as well as an astronaut. So, armed with a few potatoes, he becomes Mars' first ever farmer. From there, Mark must overcome a series of increasingly tricky mental, physical and technical challenges just to stay alive, until finally, he realizes there is just a glimmer of hope that he may actually be rescued. Weir displays a virtuosic ability to write about highly technical situations without leaving readers far behind. The result is a story that is as plausible as it is compelling. The author imbues Mark with a sharp sense of humor, which cuts the tension, sometimes a little too much—some readers may be laughing when they should be on the edges of their seats. As for Mark’s verbal style, the modern dialogue at times undermines the futuristic setting. In fact, people in the book seem not only to talk the way we do now, they also use the same technology (cellphones, computers with keyboards). This makes the story feel like it's set in an alternate present, where the only difference is that humans are sending manned flights to Mars. Still, the author’s ingenuity in finding new scrapes to put Mark in, not to mention the ingenuity in finding ways out of said scrapes, is impressive.
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3902-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
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