by Jay B. Gaskill ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A lengthy but focused tale with characters that readers will root for.
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A cultlike group secretly implements a diabolical plan in the United States to rectify overpopulation in Gaskill’s (Gabriel’s Stand, 2014) thriller.
The movement in America to ratify the Earth Restoration Treaty seems like a noble cause. But the man covertly spearheading it is the Baron, an enigmatic German official. His true interest is the ratified treaty’s outcome, which will somehow allow his group to bypass “conflicting provisions” of the Constitution and take power. The Baron sends his mentee, Louise Berker, to the United States to push his agenda. Their group, the Gaia Antibodies Network, has its share of sympathetic senators and, to ensure treaty ratification, plans to assassinate senators who don’t support the movement. This includes Sen. Gabriel Sitting Bear Lindstrom; though he’s an environmentalist, the Baron feels his integrity and popularity could prove a detriment for the G-A-N. Berker sets about recruiting Gabriel’s daughter, Helen Snowfeather, who at first respects the G-A-N’s environmental message. That is, until she realizes the group is a cult that worships Earth goddess, Gaia, and believes humans are the planet’s greatest threat and should be treated as such. On achieving power in America, the G-A-N will be able to neutralize said threat by fostering a pandemic to wipe out humanity to near extinction. But at the heart of the nefarious plot is the Gaia Operations Directorate, which ultimately gains the power to outlaw both high-tech medicine and antibiotics. The G-O-D also has incentive to target people who defy the organization, putting Gabriel, Snowfeather, and others in danger of imprisonment or assassination. Despite the Baron initiating his scheme in the United States, it’s clear that the entire world is in peril. Nevertheless, Gaskill wisely centers the story on only a few characters. This allows for more character development for individuals like Dr. John Owen, a pharmaceutical maker, and Fred Loud Owl, a Navajo spirit guide. As such, the occasional death—or mysterious disappearance—has greater dramatic impact. The first third of the novel is the most enthralling, primarily concentrating on the G-A-N’s attempts to garner supporters. It’s believable that the environmental movement would attract people and equally frightening that it so easily transitions to fanaticism. Similarly, the gradual reveal of the cult is unsettling, particularly Snowfeather overhearing voices chanting to Gaia. The book’s latter part is slower, as many of those in defiance of G-O-D have either become fugitives or gone into hiding. But Gaskill’s prose throughout is concise, producing sharp images: “A handful of the deciduous trees on 11campus had begun to show color, stray red leaves among the oaks, and a few glittering gold spots among the birches, but the grass was lush and the sun warm.” And notwithstanding murders or severed body parts, the author keeps the obscenities and violence to a minimum. As the novel eventually becomes a simple matter of the good guys rallying fellow Americans against villainous groups, Gaskill paves the way for a thorough resolution. Still, there’s a small opening for a sequel.
A lengthy but focused tale with characters that readers will root for.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 495
Publisher: Station Square Media
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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