An intelligent, entertaining take on the possibilities of science.
In Webb and Parekkadan’s debut graphic novel, a near-future civilization is in danger of collapse due to bioterrorism and a miracle drug that may no longer be effective.
Stem cell biologist Bruce Abbott’s Tigris is a drug that’s supposed to end all disease. It’s part of what has made the Nyima Corporation, run by CEO Damon Locke, a global powerhouse. The company is also behind the SEQ network, which contains information on billions of human genomes. The world’s internet and power grid were once brought down for days by a geomagnetic event, so to secure a new power source, NASA plans a mission to sister planet Kepler Z. Some sick people on Earth, however, aren’t in the SEQ system and are being turned away by SEQ-approved physicians. Concurrently, bioterrorists have released a synthetic disease that Tigris won’t cure, leading to an outbreak. Investigators with the Department of Homeland Security connect an ancient marking associated with terrorists to a symbol on Bruce’s watch, which belonged to his brother, Jack, who’s been in hiding for some time. As riots and suicides increase, government operative Henry Ford, in defiance of CIA orders, hopes to find answers by tracking down the symbol’s origin. Or perhaps Earth’s salvation lies with astronaut Tessa Jones, who reaches Kepler Z and discovers an alien species. The authors’ story succeeds at explaining its scientific terminology and seamlessly incorporating it into the narrative. Chapter titles provide definitions that double as metaphors; “Apoptosis,” for instance, is defined as the process of “programmed cell suicide,” while some characters believe that people’s suicides are part of natural human development. Most characters are ambiguous at first; a flashback of Bruce’s relationship with Jack, for instance, sheds light on both men, and more twists involving Bruce come later. The colorful panels are courtesy of LaGaipa and a team of artists, and although differences in the artwork are discernible, the characters and settings remain cohesive. A finale packed with plot turns feels like the setup for a new story rather than an open ending. It’s unquestionably rousing, but readers may anticipate a follow-up.
An intelligent, entertaining take on the possibilities of science.Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9998195-1-7
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Dream Novels LLC
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This large, stately, and intensely powerful new novel by the author of Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show is constructed around a cattle drive—an epic journey from dry, hard-drinking south Texas, where a band of retired Texas Rangers has been living idly, to the last outpost and the last days of the old, unsettled West in rough Montana. The time is the 1880s. The characters are larger than life and shimmer: Captain Woodrow Call, who leads the drive, is the American type of an unrelentingly righteous man whose values are puritanical and pioneering and whose orders, which his men inevitably follow, lead, toward the end, to their deaths; talkative Gus McCrae, Call's best friend, learned, lenient, almost magically skilled in a crisis, who is one of those who dies; Newt, the unacknowledged 17-year-old son of Captain Call's one period of self-indulgence and the inheritor of what will become a new and kinder West; and whores, drivers, misplaced sheriffs and scattered settlers, all of whom are drawn sharply, engagingly, movingly. As the rag-tag band drives the cattle 3,000 miles northward, only Call fails to learn that his quest to conquer more new territories in the West is futile—it's a quest that perishes as men are killed by natural menaces that soon will be tamed and by half-starved renegades who soon will die at the hands of those less heroic than themselves. McMurtry shows that it is a quest misplaced in history, in a landscape that is bare of buffalo but still mythic; and it is only one of McMurtry's major accomplishments that he does it without forfeiting a grain of the characters' sympathetic power or of the book's considerable suspense. This is a masterly novel. It will appeal to all lovers of fiction of the first order.
Pub Date: June 1, 1985
ISBN: 068487122X
Page Count: 872
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1985
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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