Moderately entertaining, high-stakes fantasy; first in a planned series.
In Terrell’s first novel, high school student Andrea Jillian Fox’s mysterious parentage and shadowy destiny threatens two worlds.
Smart, capable teen Jill (only rarely called “Andrea”) finds herself caught between two realms: Mundane Earth and the magical world of Dreh’na. On Earth, her disreputable friends Castor and Spencer Brownsborough constantly talk her into pranks and mischief. Quiet, secretive best friend Johnny Rocket seems more and more unusual every day. As Jill’s seemingly ordinary life continues, people begin to disappear in her community; she’s stalked by an ominous man in a brown duster and black scarf; and she must deal with nightmares and sleepwalking. After she’s ordered to take sleeping pills, Jill’s life spirals down into chaos and she learns that nothing of her background is true. With her loyal friends the Brownsborough brothers and the increasingly strange Johnny, she discovers Dreh’na and the terrible beginnings of a war between immortal powers unknown to those on Earth. She is told of her true heritage, half human and half Shade; i.e., “You could say that she is a new breed of human…a subspecies, carrying the genetic traits of both modern humans and the Endless.” She bonds with the disembodied life force of her beloved Johnny Rocket and stands “at the center of a storm” that threatens to engulf both of her worlds. She is called The End and is told that now she is on the Path to the End in a tale that culminates in a disastrous, fiery climax in Phoenix, Arizona. The prose is workaday, and the style hovers between YA and adult fantasy fiction. The human characters are solid and believable, with the entertaining Brownsborough brothers as edgier stand-ins for the better-known Weasley twins. The fantastical characters fare less well and stock stentorian dialogue sounds forced. The already quick pace accelerates during a furious action scene in the final quarter of the novel.
Moderately entertaining, high-stakes fantasy; first in a planned series.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0692261750
Page Count: 406
Publisher: Skyrun Circle
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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