A straightforward action fantasy held back by rough prose.
In Perks’ sci-fi debut, mercenaries track a rogue scientist who’s stolen a technologically advanced society’s most prized resource.
On the planet Stasis, two societies exist: one populated by Sunbathers, who live in permanent daylight, and the other by Darksiders, who live in eternal night. The two peoples used to help each other, with the Darksiders working as farmers and manufacturers for the Sunbathers. Then the daylight dwellers began using a rare energy source known as Ultimatter, leading them into a technological golden age, and they abandoned their nighttime cousins to cruel fate. But when someone steals the Ultimatter from the Sunbather capital, Minister Alter hires a group of Darksider hunters, famous for taking down the savage king of a race of gigantic, horned, wolflike creatures called the verron. These hunters—Wallace, Rodney, Jorge, and Henry—reluctantly agree to help those responsible for the Darksiders’ dismal lives, and even team up with Alter’s scientist niece, Halie, and a few other tech-savvy Sunbathers to find the Ultimatter. (Along the way, the four hunters love to bicker: “I could knock some of your teeth out.”) Minister Alter believes that the scorned scientist Olaf Heinemann, whose inventions were rejected by the Science Academy, is responsible; Sunbather tracking equipment has narrowed the location of his base to several fortified spots in Darksider territory. Olaf is aided, however, by a man named Tank, formerly of the High Guard Military. They’ve been using the Ultimatter to create new weapons that may be powerful enough to rule both sides of Stasis. Perks’ debut playfully situates futuristic elements, such as hover cars, on a primitive, Earth-like world similar to those found in the Final Fantasy video game series. His creatures, which include the branch-swinging “ioles” and lumbering herds of “phantions,” are at once familiar and enjoyably exotic. The fact that the Darksiders must wear special goggles while in bright light reinforces how the two peoples have diverged even on a physical level. The prose, unfortunately, screams out for stronger editorial guidance; typos, awkward grammar and punctuation errors abound, as in the line, “Clam down I’m sorry I couldn’t resist it.” The conclusion seems eager to retire the Darksiders, although it does leave room for further narrative.
A straightforward action fantasy held back by rough prose.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-1489703637
Page Count: 256
Publisher: LifeRichPublishing
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This large, stately, and intensely powerful new novel by the author of Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show is constructed around a cattle drive—an epic journey from dry, hard-drinking south Texas, where a band of retired Texas Rangers has been living idly, to the last outpost and the last days of the old, unsettled West in rough Montana. The time is the 1880s. The characters are larger than life and shimmer: Captain Woodrow Call, who leads the drive, is the American type of an unrelentingly righteous man whose values are puritanical and pioneering and whose orders, which his men inevitably follow, lead, toward the end, to their deaths; talkative Gus McCrae, Call's best friend, learned, lenient, almost magically skilled in a crisis, who is one of those who dies; Newt, the unacknowledged 17-year-old son of Captain Call's one period of self-indulgence and the inheritor of what will become a new and kinder West; and whores, drivers, misplaced sheriffs and scattered settlers, all of whom are drawn sharply, engagingly, movingly. As the rag-tag band drives the cattle 3,000 miles northward, only Call fails to learn that his quest to conquer more new territories in the West is futile—it's a quest that perishes as men are killed by natural menaces that soon will be tamed and by half-starved renegades who soon will die at the hands of those less heroic than themselves. McMurtry shows that it is a quest misplaced in history, in a landscape that is bare of buffalo but still mythic; and it is only one of McMurtry's major accomplishments that he does it without forfeiting a grain of the characters' sympathetic power or of the book's considerable suspense. This is a masterly novel. It will appeal to all lovers of fiction of the first order.
Pub Date: June 1, 1985
ISBN: 068487122X
Page Count: 872
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1985
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
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
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