A slender, variable but rich collection of fantasy-horror fiction, with a nonevangelizing emphasis on the spiritual.
Seven horror and fantasy stories inspire chills and awe in haunted and mythic locations, ranging from a serial killer’s lair to war-torn ancient Greece to the neglected Garden of Eden.
This is the first collection of short stories by DiCristofano—the title’s “Volume 1” designation presumes more are to be expected, and that’s not a bad thing, not a bad thing at all, especially for fantastic-fiction fans whose tastes run more toward thoughtful awe than splatterpunk and visceral torture-porn shock. Sometimes writing in a fetchingly archaic style more appropriate (despite modern slang) for Weird Tales in the 1920s and ’30s, DiCristofano conjures up seven macabre yarns (or six plus a plotless, introspective concluding monologue that lends the anthology its title). The material varies in quality, effectiveness and level of violence, but on the whole the stories testify to an imaginative writer with a skilled, even sublime grasp. The Lovecraft-influenced “Hydromancy 101” describes callous archaeologists and their greedy patron meddling with an unearthly biblical artifact, guarded since the reign of King Solomon and possibly capable of unleashing ultimate evil on creation. In “The Passing of Eric Webber,” a dying German soldier on the battlefield manages a rewarding conversation with Death after noticing that the scythe-wielding Grim Reaper wears tennis shoes under his charnel robe. “Divine Vengeance” revisits the lately much-revived Greek legend of the 300 Spartans, with a rip-roaring yet moving and philosophically profound follow-up in which slain hero-king Leonidas gets revenge against enemies, mortal and god alike, with the aid of vastly powerful new friends. Though this isn’t traditional inspirational fiction, DiCristofano’s Christian-religious outlook is most obvious in the longest tale, “Thy Kingdom Found,” in which a modern girl’s innocence (and, importantly, gift for storytelling) replenishes a certain long-lost Old Testament garden. And, yes, C.S. Lewis gets name-checked—though readers will also note some resemblance to Neil Gaiman, Edgar Allan Poe and the more magically inclined confabulations of H.G. Wells. And that’s not a bad thing, not a bad thing at all.
A slender, variable but rich collection of fantasy-horror fiction, with a nonevangelizing emphasis on the spiritual.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2010
ISBN: 978-0557295166
Page Count: 153
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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