Takes time to find its footing, but a promising start for a sure-to-be epic tale of combative worlds.
After surviving a serious injury, a man soon realizes that he not only sees and hears demons, but feels destined to hunt and kill them in this series-opening supernatural debut.
Paul Stone’s devastation at witnessing a van smash into his best friend, Kris Reed, is compounded when Paul himself, checking on his maimed bestie, is sideswiped by a second car. He wakes up from a three-day coma, but Kris unfortunately dies. So it’s perfectly natural that Paul assumes he’s hallucinating when he later sees Kris watching TV. Kris, however, is there, a Guide for Paul, who as it happens is a Walker. Paul can cross between worlds, retaining his human life while also destroying demons—little red, horned beasts invisible to humans and feeding off individuals’ fear and negativity. Paul has help from Guide Kris (mostly providing information) as well as a healing ability and a special pocket watch that counts down to impending demon encounters. But something bigger is at play: Walkers are turning up dead, the only capable killers being God or another Walker. Paul teams up with a moderately good devil (devil’s not synonymous with demon), seeking assistance from both heaven and hell. But who knows what will transpire if Paul’s really the Stone Walker, prophesied to wage war on all demons and devils. While much of the story focuses on Paul learning about tales of angels and demons in conflict, the new Walker does engage in fisticuffs with demons and a few other things. The mystery of murdered Walkers wraps up in a satisfying, rapid-paced final act with bloody battles and a surprise or two. Contrarily, multiple chapters devoted to a character named Mason, who was driving one of those vehicles at the beginning, seem disconnected. The plotlines are indisputably linked, with Mason having his own demon. But his story too often veers into lengthy, uneventful scenes, like discussing music/musicians with potential lover/band mate Sarah, while his coda is weirdly ambiguous. Some of the main plot elements Norry (Zombie Zero: The First Zombie, 2016, etc.) leaves dangling, including the idea of an Original Demon. But the blistering cliffhanger ending makes clear that the author’s setting the stage for subsequent series entries.
Takes time to find its footing, but a promising start for a sure-to-be epic tale of combative worlds.Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9907280-2-3
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Sudden Insight Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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