A rampaging read with memorable characters that proves to be a promising first installment of a planned series.
In this rollicking debut novel, Hamlet successfully transforms bureaucratic infighting into an apocalyptic struggle between good and evil.
At the heart of the action is Anna Wei, a member of the National Security Agency’s Division of Unconventional Weaponry and Tactics, a kind of supernatural SWAT team. Like too many young women in the Washington, D.C., area, Wei is married to her job, although she hooks up occasionally with a striking half-vampire. Hers is not the healthiest lifestyle, as she and her Chaos squad mates employ black magic and enchanted weapons to battle the undead, such as ghouls and vampires. Her co-workers include an immortal and cursed paladin, a Nigerian shaman, a bookish shape-shifter, a brilliant, cranky wizard, and an inept summoner. DUWAT members often find themselves at odds with the “Churchies,” such as the Department of Defense’s Defense Intelligence Agency, who use white magic to combat similar paranormal threats. Both secret groups are soon targeting Ethan Morgan, a former Chaos agent who is now using death magic. Morgan is seeking revenge for the death of his younger brother, a soldier killed in a secret DOD “Perfect Cleansing,” and he doesn’t care who else dies in the process. He has an intricate plan to make himself so powerful that all the forces of good can’t stop him. The novel focuses on the search for Morgan and leads to a pitched conflagration at Arlington National Cemetery from which few walk away unscathed. Hamlet, an admitted, longtime slinger of red tape, does a masterful job of transforming mundane bureaucracy into a supernatural battleground. He has ably fused the disparate genres of political thriller and zombie apocalypse into one book that will satisfy fans of either—no mean feat. Best of all, Hamlet has set himself up to write more such tantalizing hybrids.
A rampaging read with memorable characters that proves to be a promising first installment of a planned series.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1484862698
Page Count: 312
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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