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THOMAS WILDUS & THE BOOK OF SORROWS

Name: THOMAS WILDUS & THE BOOK OF SORROWS
Author: J.M. Bergen
ISBN: 978-1-73245-780-5

by J.M. Bergen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 2, 2019

An often appealing but slow-paced magical journey.

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A 12-year-old’s quest to learn “real magic” leads him to an unusual bookstore in this debut middle-grade series starter.

Thomas Wildus lives in Southern California’s Orange County. He loves practicing kung fu, playing beach volleyball, and competing with his best friend, Enrique, to draw the funniest doodles during social studies. Yet there’s a hole in his life, as he yearns to understand his long-dead father’s last words to him: “No matter what happens, always remember that magic is real.” When Thomas discovers a “curious” antiquarian bookstore, he hesitantly asks the shopkeeper for books on “real magic.” The man loans him an unusual tome, enclosed in a locked box that opens with a “luminous” key, and he warns him to read only one chapter a day, at home, when nobody else is around. As Thomas slowly progresses through the book, he encounters disconcerting strangers in his hometown, who warn him, “We are watching you.” Even the owner of his favorite comic-book shop treats him oddly. Also, his college professor mom arranges for a tutor to teach Thomas “interdimensional physics.” But what really rattles the boy is the fact that a giant thug in a van has begun stalking him. After Thomas finishes the book, he finds himself on an adventure that takes him to China’s Yunnan province and a canyon in Chiapas, Mexico. For the most part, Bergen offers a lively adventure in his debut. That said, the pacing can frustratingly drag at times, as it sequentially unveils each and every chapter of the magic book. Also, Bergen presents the strange book’s text in an archaic English style. All the “-eth” and “-est” verb endings become tiresome and seem to have been employed merely to make the myths—about an ancient land called Elandria—sound old. If, as Thomas notes, the tales about the birth of magic take place in a time before written language, it seems unnecessary to tell them in such a distractingly odd manner.

An often appealing but slow-paced magical journey.

Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-73245-780-5

Page Count: 364

Publisher: Elandrian Press

Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2018

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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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.