A transcendent sci-fi beach read.
In the second installment of Scott’s (Shades of Truth, 2007) sci-fi trilogy, an undercover guardian of the human race dodges bullets in Arizona and Peru and passes through dimensional gates of space-time.
Sara Alessa Giustino was born in 16th-century Italy but retains her youth and vigor five centuries later thanks to childhood mentoring and a few physical alterations by a “cosmic alien” from Andromeda named Kryios. Sara has a mission to protect the planet’s biosphere and the humans within it, because Earth turns out to be a valuable piece of real estate in the universe. After finishing an assignment to destroy an alien lab, Sara receives an anonymous note warning of a billion-dollar price on her head and urging her to visit an Arizona man named David. She finds him in Sedona, along with other shady characters in a covert group centered on finding the Urstar, a hidden alien artifact of immense power. Sara and David, just a few steps ahead of pursuers, soon travel to mystic gates in North and South America. While this novel has all the elements for a trendy paranormal romance, the author opts instead for a lean, matter-of-fact action thriller, complete with car chases and hostage takings. Along the way, Sara passes through different realms of consciousness and existence, tours far-future cities and underground complexes, and even undergoes a Doctor Who–style regeneration. The book’s dizzying cosmology embraces UFOs, Area 51, black holes, moon-landing coverups, astrology, reincarnation, pyramid power, the Bermuda Triangle, crystals, chakras, karma and the fifth dimension. Fortunately, it’s all delivered with a light, brisk touch of pure pulp fantasy.
A transcendent sci-fi beach read.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1450269124
Page Count: 292
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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