An intriguing, multifaceted story that needs polish.
In this cross-dimensional novel, Mowery juxtaposes three versions of Elizabeth Ann Anderson, which differ by much more than haircut.
The month of June packs years’ worth of tension and shock for Liz, Beth and Eliza, each of whom resides in a beach house connected to her childhood. Shortly before each woman loses her past or present significant other, lengthy, unnatural soliloquies or forced flashbacks rattle off their details. Unfortunately, such infodumps, along with sentences lacking much-needed punctuation, detract from a potentially interesting story. Mowery gets the three stories time-coordinated via seemingly unrelated catalyzing events—Liz’s cherished husband, Peter, dies in a plane crash; Beth loses the love of her life, Maxine, to cancer; Eliza murders her philandering ex-husband and his lover (who was also Eliza’s friend), Peg. Eliza congratulates herself not only for failing to digest her daily dose of bipolar-disorder medication—a flub she credits with fueling her murderous act—but also for finding a scapegoat in the form of Peg’s cuckolded husband. She exonerates herself from guilt by promising to do good deeds—a mindset that’s difficult to empathize with. Moving along, Mowery weaves in the equally dramatic (though easier to accept) threads of Liz’s crash course in the secret identities of her deceased husband, as well as Beth’s benevolent intervention on behalf of her niece, a lesbian who recently outed herself. This novel’s intrigue lies in its core scenario: a single individual, traumatized early in life, branches into three women leading parallel lives in overlapping physical space but in distinct dimensions. As they’re meted out, mirrored details and events build suspense that pays off, but not to an impressive degree. In the unpolished narrative style, climactic moments suffer from inconsistent characterization of the Elizabeths and explanations developed in Elizabeth’s unprompted talks to herself. Whittled down to its bare-bones plot, the novel has potential, but for that potential to be realized, expository information needs to be seamlessly incorporated into the narrative, actions and words need to be consistent, and the narrative on the whole needs to be edited for clarity.
An intriguing, multifaceted story that needs polish.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-1470077433
Page Count: 180
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2012
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
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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