An intriguing but underdeveloped story about a parallel universe.
A debut graphic novel blends sci-fi and myth.
This book is split into two roughly equal parts, both presented by Karel, a freelance reporter on Earth. The first section introduces some students—Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, and Fox —their professor, nicknamed Pro, and Alpha’s mother, Pam, who is romantically involved with Pro. The team is searching for signs of intelligent life on other worlds. The group discovers a parallel universe that contains a mirror planet to Earth called the Twin. There, humans have evolved into a global society quite different from Earth in terms of ethics, economics, and technology. Pam and Pro travel to the Twin to gather and exchange information, where they have a daughter they name Pamela. Pamela makes the arduous journey to Earth to promote understanding between the cultures. The second half of the book starts with the creation story of the twin universes told from Alpha’s point of view. It also includes a chapter briefly describing a fantasy about Pamela written by Karel and a story arc about an overbearing government trying to force itself on a land called Bohemia. There are some captivating sci-fi ideas in Kosman’s short novel, especially those relating to the wormhole between Earth and the Twin and the complex process of traveling from one planet to the other. But the tale reads more like an outline for something longer and more comprehensive than a finished book. Too much is left out. At one point in the first part of the volume, the author writes that criminals from a penal colony invade the Twin, but that episode is summed up and dismissed in a couple of sentences, and only mentioned in passing in the second half. Readers never get to see the full story. Formatting inconsistencies also make this a tough read. There are occasional shifts into first person; some dialogue is in quotes and some isn’t; and footnotes offer key information that should have been relayed through the main narration. And the images by debut illustrator Tiwari don’t enhance the tale. There are only 13 of them and they reveal nothing that is not already covered in the text.
An intriguing but underdeveloped story about a parallel universe.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-692-98738-4
Page Count: 106
Publisher: Quires Investments RLLLP
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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