An engaging, tense installment in this ongoing series.
The latest book in Lankford’s (The Sacred Impostor, 2012, etc.) series about the adventures of a clone of Jesus of Nazareth.
At the beginning of this latest installment, Maggie Duffy Morelli is in Switzerland’s crowded Lugano marketplace when she encounters her 18-year-old son, Jess, who greets her with a glowing smile. She faints, and for a very good reason: Eight years before, she’d watched him die in her arms. When he revives her and they start talking, she’s not entirely surprised, because in this series, Jess is a biological clone of Jesus, grown from cell samples taken from the Shroud of Turin by a scientist named Felix Rossi. Like the Jesus of the Gospels, Jess has returned from the dead—albeit less promptly, taking eight years instead of three days. He surprises Maggie by quoting not only the New Testament but also the holy books of Hinduism, Islam and other creeds, telling her that “Truth is written everywhere.” Like his historical counterpart, he has a mission to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to the world’s potential believers, and that quest, in a complicated but extremely well-orchestrated plot, brings him to the small East African village of Udugu. As Lankford weaves her various subplots together, many other characters converge on Udugu for their own different and often mercenary reasons, including Wall Street hotshot Zach Dunlop and his abrasive wife, Zenia (who steals many scenes), conflicted pastor Paul Joseph, and Rossi and his family. At the heart of the book’s climax is Jess himself, exuding compassion (“All life’s troubles lay in their fears and they did not see”) while trying to save a very corrupt world. Readers unfamiliar with the series’ previous books will find a great many things unexplained here, but the action and sexual tension—often centering on Zenia—will nonetheless keep them entertained.
An engaging, tense installment in this ongoing series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-0971869486
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Great Reads Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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