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
Here, after last year's Of Love and Shadows, the tale of a quirky young woman's rise to influence in an unnamed South American country—with a delightful cast of exotic characters, but without the sure-handed plotting and leisurely grace of Allende's first—and best—book, The House of the Spirits (1985). When little Eva Luna's mother dies, the imaginative child is hired out to a string of eccentric families. During one of her periodic bouts of rebellion, she runs away and makes friends with Huberto Naranjo, a slick little street-kid. Years later, when she's in another bind, he finds her a place to stay in the red-light district—with a cheerful madame, La Senora, whose best friend is Melesio, a transvestite cabaret star. Everything's cozy until a new police sergeant takes over the district and disrupts the accepted system of corruption. Melesio drafts a protesting petition and is packed off to prison, and Eva's out on the street. She meets Riad Halabi, a kind Arab merchant with a cleft lip, who takes pity on her and whisks her away to the backwater village of Agua Santa. There, Eva keeps her savior's sulky wife Zulema company. Zulema commits suicide after a failed extramarital romance, and the previously loyal visitors begin to whisper about the relationship between Riad Halabi and Eva. So Eva departs for the capital—where she meets up with Melesio (now known as Mimi), begins an affair with Huberto Naranjo (now a famous rebel leader), and becomes casually involved in the revolutionary movement. Brimming with hothouse color, amply displayed in Allende's mellifluous prose, but the riot of character and incident here is surface effect; and the action—the mishaps of Eva—is toothless and vague. Lively entertainment, then, with little resonance.
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1988
ISBN: 0241951658
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1988
A magical, deeply felt novel that breathes new life into an old genre.
A German teenager whose family moves to Alabama gets a deep-fried Southern gothic education.
Max is gifted, but if you’re thinking “honors student,” think again. He touches dead animals or withered plants and they return to life; whether his power (or curse, as Max thinks of it) works on dead people is part of the story’s suspense. The curse comes with pitfalls: Migraines besiege him after his resurrections, and he craves gobs of sugar. This insightful novel isn’t a fantasy, and Hudson treats Max’s gift as quite real. In addition, Hudson, an Alabama native, memorably evokes her home state, both its beauty and its warped rituals. Max’s father is an engineer, and the car company where he works has transferred him to a factory in Alabama; Max’s parents hope living there will give him a clean break from his troubled love for his dead classmate, Nils. Max is drawn to Pan, a witchy gay boy who wears dresses and believes in auras and incantations. Pan is the only person who knows about Max’s power. But Max also becomes enchanted with the Judge, a classmate's powerful father who’s running for governor and is vociferous about his astringent faith in Christ after an earlier life of sin (it's hard to read the novel and not think of Judge Roy Moore, who ran for U.S. Senate from Alabama, as the Judge’s real-life analogue). The Judge has plans for Max, who feels torn between his love for outcast Pan and the feeling of belonging the Judge provides. But that belonging has clear costs; the Judge likes to test potential believers by dosing them with poison. The real believers survive. Hudson invokes the tropes of Alabama to powerful effect: the bizarre fundamentalism; the religion of football; the cultlike unification of church and state. The tropes run the risk of feeling hackneyed, but this is Southern gothic territory, after all. Hudson brings something new to that terrain: an overt depiction of queer desire, welcome because writers such as Capote’s and McCullers’ depictions of queerness were so occluded.
A magical, deeply felt novel that breathes new life into an old genre.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63149-629-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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