Steamy and nuanced, but ultimately a fairly predictable entrance into the already overcrowded paranormal romance genre.
Literary gothic novelist Carol Goodman (Arcadia Falls, 2010, etc.) takes on a Mary-Sueish pen name for this contemporary fantasy about an academic who discovers the truth behind the myths she studies.
Cailleach “Callie” McFay, a newly minted doctorate and author of a popular book on demon lovers, accepts a teaching position at Fairwick College, a small liberal-arts college in upstate New York, based on the strength of their folklore department and a desire to buy a home near the college. The department is so strong because its information comes right from the source: Many faculty members and locals are fairies, witches, demons and other assorted magical beings, and Callie learns that she is among their number. Moreover, the home that so appealed to her is historically favored by an incubus. Although the incubus offers her hot supernatural sex at night, he’s also leeching Callie of her life substance, so she performs a banishing ritual. The incubus seems to vanish, but not long afterward, Fairwick hires Liam, an attractive Irish poet, and he and Callie begin having mind-blowing sex. Could there be a connection between Liam and the incubus? (Is there actually any doubt?) “Juliet Dark” clearly knows what she’s talking about when it comes to academia and folklore; it’s odd that her protagonist seems to know so little about the latter, given that she’s supposedly an expert in that area. The solutions to the central mysteries of the book are almost painfully obvious; however, the final confrontation between Callie and the incubus still holds some surprise and complex emotional texture.
Steamy and nuanced, but ultimately a fairly predictable entrance into the already overcrowded paranormal romance genre.Pub Date: Dec. 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-345-51008-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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 modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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