The authors collected here should know about the occult—nearly all of them are dead. But to the credit of the editors of this shoestring (dead authors=much public domain work=low royalties) anthology, mixed among the very moldy and familiar chestnuts (Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown, W.F. Harvey's August Heat) are some rarities: H.G. Wells' life-after-death tale, Under the Knife; Arthur Conan Doyle's personality-transfer story, The Great Keinplatz Experiment, and little-collected tales from August Derleth, Edith Wharton, Rudyard Kipling, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and others. Editor Asimov contributes a forgettable introduction and, to each tale, a slightly more useful afterword discussing the tale's theme (22 themes—"Evil Eye," "Exorcism," "Soul Travel," etc.—with one story per theme). Overall, an anthology of interest primarily to occult-fiction completists.
Pub Date: April 1, 1989
ISBN: 0879755318
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Although this sequel doesn’t break new ground, it will appeal strongly to fans of the first book.
More steampunk adventures of a samurai prognosticator, his clockwork octopus, and his human lovers.
Five years after her charming debut novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (2015), Pulley brings back the main characters for another scramble through the dangers and consequences of clairvoyance. Readers of the first book already know the big reveal: that Keita Mori—the eponymous London watchmaker—has an unusual memory that works both backward and forward. (Readers new to the series should put this book down and start with Watchmaker.) This time Pulley sets the action principally in Japan, where Mori; Thaniel Steepleton, a British translator and diplomat; Grace Carrow Matsumoto, a physicist; and Takiko Pepperharrow, a Kabuki actress and baroness, are working together to foil a samurai’s power grab and turn away a Russian invasion. At least, that’s what Mori’s doing; the others are rushing blindly down paths he’s laid out for them, which may or may not get them where he wants them to go. But if Mori knows what’s coming and what steps they can take to change the future, why doesn’t he just tell them what to do? The answer is half satisfying (because, as in any complicated relationship, communication isn’t always easy; because the characters have wills of their own and might not obey) and half irritating (because if he did, there wouldn’t be much of a story). Pulley’s witty writing and enthusiastically deployed steampunk motifs—clockwork, owls, a mechanical pet, Tesla-inspired electrical drama—enliven a plot that drags in the middle before rushing toward its explosive end. Perhaps more interesting than the plot are the relationships. The characters revolve through a complex pattern of marriages of passion and convenience, sometimes across and sometimes within genders and cultures, punctuated by jealousy and interesting questions about trust.
Although this sequel doesn’t break new ground, it will appeal strongly to fans of the first book.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63557-330-5
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
The worst fear raised by this odd creature feature is that it will spawn a sequel.
When he and his widowed mother are threatened by a freakish killer, a brilliant 11-year-old boy on the autism spectrum teams with an orphaned dog with human intelligence to fight off evil.
The boy, Woody, hasn't spoken a word in his life but has created a sophisticated virtual world to escape to and can hack the most complex dark web networks. He's determined to avenge his researcher father, who died in a suspicious helicopter crash. The dog, Kipp, orphaned by the death of his aged, loving caretaker, is part of an underground canine network boasting many other similarly advanced, genetically engineered dogs. (These dogs, who call themselves the Mysterium, are capable of such miracles as retrieving books from the library and reading them at night.) Out of the blue, a man who once worked with Woody's father and briefly dated Megan, Woody's mother, propositions and then threatens her. "I am becoming the king of beasts," he boasts, after having bitten a young woman to death. There is certainly no lack of raw action in the book, Koontz's first following five novels featuring investigator Jane Hawk. It just takes a certain kind of reader to...swallow the plot. Depending on one's susceptibility to heart-tugging boy-and-dog tales, the novel will either be dismissed as a work of cloying commercial calculation or enjoyed as a crafty blend of genres.
The worst fear raised by this odd creature feature is that it will spawn a sequel.Pub Date: April 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1542019507
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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