Alluring, lyrical prose, although story questions still linger.
The third entry in Lefave’s (The Gadlin Conspiracy, 2017, etc.) dystopian series finds twins Elize and Keeto at the center of a government’s war against their Gadlin race.
When the twins first moved to the city of Eadonberg, they feared that their father would have Elize committed, like their mother. Now Elize’s psychosis is getting worse as she continues hearing voices and experiencing blackouts. However, the siblings may be able to find some answers in their new city, starting with the nature of their father’s secret project at the Unification Research Arm, where he was once director. They’re also searching for a boy named Teddy, who may have some insight into what happened to some recently abducted children as well as into the twins’ missing childhood memories, which could explain Elize’s mental deterioration. Meanwhile, Sothese, who’s the governor of the Global Spiritual Unit and the adviser to a political and religious figurehead called the Pramam, is hunting the twins. He wants revenge for their actions in the preceding novel; he’s also aiming to become the Pramam’s successor—whatever it takes. As the Unification government wages war against the Gadlins, blaming them for terrorist acts, Elize retaliates by leading the Gadlins’ underground community in an uprising. Although Lefave’s story picks up subplots launched in earlier books, it does show some narrative progress. The twins, for example, who’d previously only pondered their origin, finally receive a startling revelation. The author relays the action through three narrators: Sothese, Elize, and Keeto. The most engaging account is Elize’s, which is often abstract—her spoken dialogue intermingles with the taunting or advice-giving voices in her head—but never confusing. Throughout, Lefave’s prose is fervent and self-assured: “They are tuned into Eli’s deviant vocal chords, and they are waiting for the nefarious songstress to get a little too disruptive at the opportune moment.” This installment concludes the first trilogy of a proposed 10-part series, leaving a number of points unresolved.
Alluring, lyrical prose, although story questions still linger.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-988814-02-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Aguacene Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An exciting, thought-provoking mind-bender.
In Crouch’s sci-fi–driven thriller, a machine designed to help people relive their memories creates apocalyptic consequences.
In 2018, NYPD Detective Barry Sutton unsuccessfully tries to talk Ann Voss Peters off the edge of the Poe Building. She claims to have False Memory Syndrome, a bewildering condition that seems to be spreading. People like Ann have detailed false memories of other lives lived, including marriages and children, but in “shades of gray, like film noir stills.” For some, like Ann, an overwhelming sense of loss leads to suicide. Barry knows loss: Eleven years ago, his 15-year-old daughter, Meghan, was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Details from Ann’s story lead him to dig deeper, and his investigation leads him to a mysterious place called Hotel Memory, where he makes a life-altering discovery. In 2007, a ridiculously wealthy philanthropist and inventor named Marcus Slade offers neuroscientist Helena Smith the chance of a lifetime and an unlimited budget to build a machine that allows people to relive their memories. He says he wants to “change the world.” Helena hopes that her mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, will benefit from her passion project. The opportunity for unfettered research is too tempting to turn down. However, when Slade takes the research in a controversial direction, Helena may have to destroy her dream to save the world. Returning to a few of the themes he explored in Dark Matter (2016), Crouch delivers a bullet-fast narrative and raises the stakes to a fever pitch. A poignant love story is woven in with much food for thought on grief and the nature of memories and how they shape us, rounding out this twisty and terrifying thrill ride.
An exciting, thought-provoking mind-bender.Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-5978-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.
Self-assured, entertaining debut novel that blends genres and crosses continents in quest of magic.
The world’s not big enough for two wizards, as Tolkien taught us—even if that world is the shiny, modern one of the late 19th century, with its streetcars and electric lights and newfangled horseless carriages. Yet, as first-time novelist Morgenstern imagines it, two wizards there are, if likely possessed of more legerdemain than true conjuring powers, and these two are jealous of their turf. It stands to reason, the laws of the universe working thus, that their children would meet and, rather than continue the feud into a new generation, would instead fall in love. Call it Romeo and Juliet for the Gilded Age, save that Morgenstern has her eye on a different Shakespearean text, The Tempest; says a fellow called Prospero to young magician Celia of the name her mother gave her, “She should have named you Miranda...I suppose she was not clever enough to think of it.” Celia is clever, however, a born magician, and eventually a big hit at the Circus of Dreams, which operates, naturally, only at night and has a slightly sinister air about it. But what would you expect of a yarn one of whose chief setting-things-into-action characters is known as “the man in the grey suit”? Morgenstern treads into Harry Potter territory, but though the chief audience for both Rowling and this tale will probably comprise of teenage girls, there are only superficial genre similarities. True, Celia’s magical powers grow, and the ordinary presto-change-o stuff gains potency—and, happily, surrealistic value. Finally, though, all the magic has deadly consequence, and it is then that the tale begins to take on the contours of a dark thriller, all told in a confident voice that is often quite poetic, as when the man in the grey suit tells us, “There’s magic in that. It’s in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict.”
Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-385-53463-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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