A lengthy but straightforward thriller that’s never short on cleverness and zeal.
In Kirk’s debut techno-thriller, scientists struggle to protect a functional quantum computer from people willing to kill for it.
After spending billions of dollars of investors’ money, California pharmaceutical company StruvePharma finally has something to show for it. CEO Peter Struve, however, surprises venture capital firm ZMPC by delivering not a drug but a device capable of generating synthetic crude oil. Later, a gunman gets past security at the StruvePharma campus, accosts the company’s resident genius, Dr. Emily Dura, and demands the device. He also wants the latest prototype of StruvePharma’s QUBE, a quantum computer of which very few people are aware. Head of security John Shea and his team quickly show up, but neither Emily nor QUBE Charlie, the most reliable prototype, survives the ensuing gunfight. Peter feels lost without Emily, the brains behind QUBE, so he turns to the person who may best know her work: her ex-husband, Stanford University professor Jack Dura. As Jack tries to design and build a new prototype, QUBE Delta, StruvePharma’s chief technical officer Aidan O’Keefe has something nefarious planned; readers know he’s in cahoots with powerful people and that he’s not the only mole at the company. Jack and others soon learn QUBE’s connection to a potent, biological virus and an imminent attack. Kirk’s novel smoothly traverses multiple genres: the final act is full-scale action; espionage crops up, courtesy of an industrial spy; and QUBE’s abilities place the book in the realm of science fiction. Readers will find that Jack takes some getting used to, as he’s initially a puerile man who only agrees to join StruvePharma on the condition he be allowed to punch Aidan, who once had an affair with Emily. But Jack does acknowledge his flaws, and his tragic back story gives him depth. Kirk’s intelligent prose is rife with scientific jargon and theories, but he brightens his tale with romance (between Jack and FBI agent Laurel Wynn) and many cinematic references. The latter are best enjoyed if readers already know the movies well; one baddie is said to resemble the “homicidal doll” in the 1988 horror film Child’s Play, for example, but the description is otherwise vague.
A lengthy but straightforward thriller that’s never short on cleverness and zeal.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-692-68733-8
Page Count: 632
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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