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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
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
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.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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