A sharp, highly readable sci-fi tale that comments on the flaws of organized religion.
A dystopian novel about a modern-day prophet.
Ridler’s wry, ribald debut opens with a forbiddingly dense prelude, setting up an off-kilter future world. In it, many people in the West have lost faith in their old gods—“not the formal Gods of old religion, they had long since abandoned those—but the new Gods of science and economics.” Many people “yearned for…a new Saviour,” and they briefly get one in the form of the “Dear Leader,” who handpicks a cadre of followers called the People’s Avengers. As his power grows, several traditional governments create a counterforce called the Gaians, and the two groups clash for control of the world. After the Avengers seize control of London, the Leader appears before the world’s media, climbs into a helicopter and disappears. An era of puritanism follows, leading to yet another war. Ridler’s narrative settles into his surreal, fractured world, whose inhabitants include Fern Praisedaughter, a young woman on the brink of assuming her status as a state-sanctioned “whore.” She’s the daughter of Corporal Praise and the brother of the wealthy, well-connected Perse. The story picks up momentum when the Leader returns to the world he abandoned so long ago. He’s old and frail and remorseful about the world’s current state (“People are killing other people in my name and it’s all a sham,” he says). His reappearance doesn’t please everybody, of course (one character thinks of him as being “useless as a piece of meat now, more useless since you weren’t allowed to eat it”), and this conflict fuels the novel’s surprising final act. Ridler’s prose is smart and fast-paced as he chronicles a world almost entirely lacking in idealism. Although such unrelenting cynicism can be a bit wearying over a few hundred pages, the author proves to be a first-rate sardonic storyteller. His characters are all well-drawn, particularly the venal, hilarious Praisedaughter, whose wisecracks about the rampant misogyny of her society provide one of the most entertaining threads running through the book.
A sharp, highly readable sci-fi tale that comments on the flaws of organized religion.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-1484129593
Page Count: 442
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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