A fun philosophical thriller featuring superheroes with yoga mats.
The supernatural meets the spiritual in this unusual, endearing thriller.
In his debut novel, Connor may have carved out a new subgenre. With a nod to comic-book stories of heroes and villains, he combines a passion for yoga and meditation with a playful mystery. When Tina Tinsdale, better known by her “superyogi” name, Physique, takes down an airplane with her supernatural powers, the FBI enlists the help of an expert on yogis gone bad. Special Agent Kevin Kirby fell down the ranks after a failed investigation into the disappearance of two missing yogis, but now the agency needs him. After a little cajoling, he agrees to take the case, and he’s partnered with the very serious Agent Marcus Rollins. From his time studying powerful yogis, Kirby is well-versed on who might be able to help, and he ultimately forms a team of superheroes to match Physique’s powers and hopefully, with some training, bring her down. Enter a handful of seemingly everyday people, who all obtained supernatural powers from practicing yoga and meditation. Each has an alias: Eric Adams is Diamond Mind; Arial Davis is Airspeed; Samantha Morris is Samsa; and Father Diego Martinez is Father Agua. Overall, this is an enjoyable, schmaltzy adventure. There’s no subtlety in the characters’ thoughts or motives, however, and that might be a loss for readers who like to be kept guessing. Also, the story may be dismissed by those who don’t appreciate a good old-fashioned tale of crime-fighting, costume-wearing vigilantes. Overall, it’s a timeless battle between good and evil, but with some Eastern philosophy in the mix. Connor drops in Buddhist-inspired wisdom throughout: for example, when Agent Rollins loses his patience with the group when they joke around, he storms out of the room: “Agent Kirby started to go after him, but Eric stopped him. ‘He’s gonna have to learn how to lighten up. Having a sense of humor is a big part in making any spiritual progress.’ ”
A fun philosophical thriller featuring superheroes with yoga mats.Pub Date: June 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0986146909
Page Count: 426
Publisher: Sky Grove
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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