A sometimes cheesy but entertaining saga of loathsome bigots getting their comeuppance.
A time traveler with high-tech weapons brings racial justice to the post–Civil War South in Henkels’ SF thriller.
The story opens in 1845 at Palmetto Plantation in Alabama, whose owner, Edmund Devereaux, is a monster given to burning slaves at the stake. He also frequently rapes enslaved women, thereby siring a daughter named Naomi. Edmund’s kindly wife, Beatrice, gives Naomi an education and teaches her the piano, and the girl quickly becomes Alabama’s foremost Chopin interpreter. She’s still a slave, though, so Edmund’s jealous white son, Clayton, humbles her by sending her into the fields; there, Naomi proves to be a prodigy at picking cotton, and she shows Edmund that he can boost field hand productivity by substituting humane treatment and incentives for capricious whippings. Edmund is so moved that, when he dies at the end of the Civil War, he leaves the whole plantation to Naomi, whereupon the enraged Clayton invades with an army of white gunmen, seizes Naomi, and prepares to burn her alive. Enter, in the nick of time, Sam Jacobs, a retired U.S. Marine sent through a time portal from the year 2031 by an angel called Hope who is busily changing the 1865 timeline. (Another of her teams has saved Lincoln from assassination.) Equipped with a Heckler & Koch SAR 536 Smart automatic rifle, body armor, night-vision goggles, two surveillance drones, and battle-control software, Sam easily routs Clayton’s gang, with their pitiful muzzle loaders and revolvers. He then turns Palmetto’s freed men into similarly outfitted special-ops commandos, led by female super-soldier Jazmine. Naomi and Sam fall in love, and Naomi gets hailed as a prophet for her visions of an inclusive society founded on equality of the races and sexes. But can they defeat the whole Ku Klux Klan, persuade the Alabama legislature to not pass Jim Crow laws, and convince Lincoln to push through a Fair Rights Amendment?
Henkels’ yarn is a grand revenge fantasy in which the 21st century grabs its futuristic gear and enlightened attitudes and storms the 19th century to end white supremacy. The novel revels in anachronisms both material (“It’s called a selfie”) and tonal as the author inserts modern lingo and perspectives into the past. (Relieved when Edmund refuses to sell Naomi, Palmetto’s butler “looked like Tiger Woods winning the U.S. Open.”) Henkels’ Black characters are moral paragons and therefore less compelling than their vile racist adversaries, whose demonic verve is depicted in punchy, colorful prose, as when an overseer gives Clayton brutality lessons: “‘Let me show ya,’ Snavely said, taking back the whip. ‘Ya gotta snap it. Start down and then snap it. It’s all in the wrists…The cat will raise some nice welts, mayhap a little blood.’” The action scenes include plenty of gratuitous violence, conveyed in similarly energetic, hardboiled writing; what the story lacks in verisimilitude, it makes up for with vigorous storytelling.
A sometimes cheesy but entertaining saga of loathsome bigots getting their comeuppance.Pub Date: May 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798995951919
Page Count: 351
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
A smart and engaging literary thriller that bears down too hard on its themes.
At the home of an eccentric millionaire, a woman discovers out-of-the-ordinary events.
When her husband is invited to finish writing his book at the island home of a reclusive millionaire, Anna is relieved: If he sells it, they’ll be able to keep their Bronx apartment and she won’t have to go back to work at the laundry. It’s 1918, and Charles Fort—based on a real-life figure—is hard at work on a book about unexplained phenomena, such as objects falling from a clear sky: frogs, for example, or even bits of flesh, or blood. If Anna has doubts about the legitimacy of his research, she keeps them to herself. In any case, when the millionaire Claude Arkel offers the couple a place to stay for the winter, they eagerly accept. Almost immediately, though, things seem to be off. Arkel runs a school for wayward girls, and three students are missing. Meanwhile, there’s no sign of Arkel himself, and with the Spanish flu raging in the outside world, the Forts are stuck in quarantine. Bakis’ latest novel has the pacing and suspense of a smart literary thriller: It’s almost impossible to put down once you’ve started it. But Bakis can be heavy-handed in her treatment of the themes that undergird her story—in this case, women who support ambitious men. That’s not to say Bakis’ case doesn’t hold water, but she strikes the same note again and again in a way that is more repetitive than satisfying. So, for example, when the Forts first arrive on Arkel’s island, and Charles observes that the grand house is “modeled on the Château de Chambord in the Val de Loire” and Anna responds, “I know, I’m the one who showed you the article,” the mansplaining moment isn’t nearly as funny as it was apparently intended to be; it's just frustrating, in a teeth-grinding way.
A smart and engaging literary thriller that bears down too hard on its themes.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781324093534
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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