An intense, sometimes-disturbing story about a disastrous American future.
In 2041, the United States goes to war with China in Hardy’s (The Place Where the Giant Fell, 2016, etc.) action-packed novel.
President Constance Higgins is in a quandary. After a socialist presidential administration, the country is $32 trillion in debt, so the government is forced to seek financial aid from foreign nations. China demands repayment of its debt in gold, but Higgins refuses. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence operatives intercept a strange transmission that mentions something called “Operation Dragon.” At a summit, China and other powerful nations inform Higgins that all the country’s debts will be cleared—if she gives them ownership of land in California that will enable them to take control of the world’s oil supply. Soon, further chaos and war erupts. Another plotline involves brothers Mike and Sean Dalton, the sons of President Higgins’ best friend, Maria. Mike puts Sean in the hospital in retaliation for upsetting his girlfriend, Kyla MacGregor, but then Sean escapes and disappears. Later, Kyla is drugged, raped, and impregnated by an intruder while Mike, a U.S. Army lieutenant, is away at war. As he fights for his own survival, he realizes that Sean’s whereabouts might be closer than he assumed. This novel effectively encapsulates the difficulty of wartime, both for those on the front line and for the decision-makers in the government. Specifically, Hardy depicts the emotional bonds between people in crisis; for example, President Higgins and Secretary of Defense John Mahood are shown to be able to work together, despite their differing opinions. However, some parts of the book espouse an anti-immigration philosophy, which some readers may find jarring: “illegal aliens living in the United States would remain loyal to Mexico....They were sucking the American economy dry of its treasure, usurping jobs, and sending the money back home.”
An intense, sometimes-disturbing story about a disastrous American future.Pub Date: March 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5413-8434-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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