A fast-paced adventure that delivers an odd mix of Bible-fueled action and clumsy dialogue.
A supernatural novel focuses on harnessing the power of Scripture.
Hampton (The Mentality, 2012, etc.) presents Aiden Zane: an Air Force veteran living a seemingly lonely existence in Edgehaven, Arizona. When readers first meet Aiden, he is in church fighting back tears. The cause of his dismay goes back some years, to a time when he and a close associate named Eran Hewer became “guardians of this world.” While on a special mission in Israel, Aiden and Eran were informed by the prophet Elijah that they would be trained to become Nabi’im. They would learn to harness superherolike powers that come not from a magical item or a radioactive accident but directly from the Holy Spirit. To utilize their abilities, they would quote Scripture. And they would need to get pretty good at that with the many dangers they would face. Eventually, Eran failed to resist temptation and he wound up releasing Lucifer into the world. Lucifer now has new plans for humanity’s destruction. Luckily for Aiden, a bold woman named Maya Hadarah is on his side. Will they have what it takes to stop Lucifer’s latest rebellion? The story progresses quickly and the action is rampant. As both fists and biblical quotes fly, the book provides a fresh angle on the idea of an epic battle. Perhaps most intriguingly, Lucifer even summons some bad guys from the Bible, such as the Canaanite god Moloch. While such details give the novel depth, other aspects are not as tightly knit. Dialogue can be awkward and even confusing, as when a policeman looking for someone named Bloodsport says to Maya: “If you don’t know where he is, then I don’t think we’d be wrong to assume that you’re him yourself!” The scene is further jumbled by the fact that Maya later repeats what happened to Aiden even though readers are well aware of that situation. Yet the narrative keeps moving with angels, demons, and the fate of the world hanging in the balance. It all culminates in an ending that is as unexpected as the idea of heroes powered by sacred texts.
A fast-paced adventure that delivers an odd mix of Bible-fueled action and clumsy dialogue.Pub Date: April 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-68328-6
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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