Enthralling potboiler that looks not at innocence lost, but innocence that perseveres.
A nostalgic, humorous chronicle about coming-of-age in 1975 rural America.
Retired Marine Scanlan (Dink-Gadink, 2005, etc.) revisits his Circleville, Ohio, birthplace, the backdrop for this big-city-thugs-meet-small-town-kids caper, for his third novel. The story opens as two boys huddle around a night fire on Logan’s Hill–a young Alex Wellesley and his best friend Jake pinprick their thumbs as part of their initiation as Blood Brothers of the Night. Innocence abounds in this postcard-perfect town as Alex, Jake and their bike-riding pals engage in the yearly ritual of summer vacation and its typical boy play. Enter the bad guys: Kevin Kiley and his two henchmen, Goon One and Goon Two. After fleeing a crime spree in the Big Apple, the three stop for gas and heedlessly forget a doctor’s kit stuffed with stolen something-or-other (its contents unknown until the novel’s last page) in the men’s room. The plot unfolds as Alex, operating under the old adage “finder’s keepers,” stumbles across the kit and decides it would make a good bag in which to stash his toys. From the sheriff and his sidekick, to an old-timer gas attendant and Rosie the local waitress, the whole town gets involved in the mystery of the black bag. Although the premise (the bad guys forgetting their loot) is somewhat implausible, Scanlan throws together a motley cast worthy of Disney’s zaniest such as Jake’s mom, Saint Dorothy and a wayfaring ex-con named Butch. Little details–returnable Fanta bottles, a stack of Life and Look magazines, kung-fu grip G.I. Joe dolls and Foghat on the radio–provide added charm as the book harkens back to the ’70s and simpler times. Aside from the occasional expletive, the book’s simple style makes it a tale that could easily double as young adult literature. Scanlan’s explorations of doublespeak (followed by italicized true thoughts), coupled with his masterful shifts between young and adult points of view, keep the pages turning.
Enthralling potboiler that looks not at innocence lost, but innocence that perseveres.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2008
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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