It’s all a bit overwrought for what is, after all, a boy-loves-girl, boy-swashbuckles-to-win-girl yarn, but it’s competently...
A flying buttress of a book, continuing the hefty Kingsbridge saga historical novelist Follett began with Pillars of the Earth (1989) and World Without End (2007).
It’s not that Follett’s been slacking between books: he’s been working away at the Century Trilogy, set centuries later, and otherwise building on the legacy of high-minded potboilers he began with Eye of the Needle (1978). Here he delivers with a vengeance, with his Kingsbridge story, set in the shadow of a great provincial cathedral, now brought into the age of Elizabeth. Ned Willard, returning from the Continent on a boatload of “cloth from Antwerp and wine from Bordeaux,” beats a hasty path through the snow and gloom to the lissome lass he’s sweet on, Margery Fitzgerald. Her mom and dad are well-connected and powerful—but, alas, Catholic, not the best choice of beliefs in an age when Tudor Protestantism is taking a vengeful turn and heads are rolling. Rollo, Margery’s brother, turns out to offer good cause for suspicion; having twitted and tormented Ned over the course of the story, he’s sailing with the Spanish by the end. But will Ned keep his head and Margery hers? Or, as Margery wonders lamentingly, “Had Ned caught Rollo, or not? Would the ceremony go ahead? Would Ned be there? Would they all die?” Ah, it is but to wonder. Follett guides his long, overstuffed story leisurely through the halls of Elizabethan history; here Bess herself turns up, while there he parades the likes of Walsingham, Francis Drake, and the whole of the Spanish Armada, even as Margery yearns, the tall masts burn, and Follett’s characters churn out suspect ethnography: “Netherlanders did not seem to care much about titles, and they liked money.”
It’s all a bit overwrought for what is, after all, a boy-loves-girl, boy-swashbuckles-to-win-girl yarn, but it’s competently done. Follett's fans will know what to expect—and they won’t be disappointed.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-525-95497-2
Page Count: 928
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
Certain to ring the topmost bell on all bestseller lists as Koontz lights up a dark galaxy.
The Koontz of the darkly concentrated 1996 suspense masterpiece Intensity has clearly walked over a bed of glowing coals, emerged spiritually recharged by the Presence, and now disgorges sweetness and light along with suspense, even more so than in his most recent page-turner, From the Corner of His Eye (2000). Here, Koontz enters the field of bioethics, with medical utilitarianism facing moral values. Of course, with his fearless imagination at work, this is not your typical tract novel. Bilious Micky Bellsong’s fractured spirit needs splints until she meets crippled young Leilani Klonk, who lives in the trailer next to Micky’s and calls herself a mutant, not a cripple. Leilani’s family believes in spiritual DNA infusions from aliens—in fact, they know her brother was abducted by aliens. Koontz tilts against a heartless idealism that sees humanity as just meat and allows euthanasia of infants with health problems, suffering old people, and those much better off with a little help getting dead and leaving life to the bioethicists. Do ETs actually show up? And if so, how truly alien is an alien? We’re not telling.
Certain to ring the topmost bell on all bestseller lists as Koontz lights up a dark galaxy.Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2001
ISBN: 0-553-80137-6
Page Count: 607
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
A modern gothic suspense novel done right.
An unfamiliar photo causes a British woman to question her identity and investigate long-hidden family secrets in this debut thriller.
With her father recently having died in an unfortunate accident the day before her birthday, Seraphine Mayes is spending her compassionate leave going through his belongings at Summerbourne, the large Norfolk estate where she was raised. In his things, she finds a photograph she’s never seen before: It shows her mother, father, and older brother, Edwin, with her mother holding a newborn baby. What’s strange, however, is that Seraphine is a twin and there’s no telling whether the baby is her or her brother, Danny. Also, mere hours after the twins’ birth, their mother committed suicide by throwing herself off a cliff near the house. Why had she never seen this photograph, what did it reveal about her past, and who took it? As Seraphine delves deeper into the mysteries of her family, she finds more deaths, coverups, and mysterious disappearances than one ancestry should contain. At the center of all of this is one figure she’s never heard of: Laura, Edwin’s au pair the summer she and Danny were born. If she can just find her, maybe she’ll discover the secret of her birth. Rous’ debut novel is a whirlwind, twisting and turning with new revelations every few pages. Pinging between Seraphine’s search in the present and Laura’s experiences in the past, the reader is never entirely sure of what they know, as each chapter brings new information that may change previous certainties. The ambiance of Summerbourne and the family that inhabits it, from the folly to the gardens to the old gardener who speaks of fairies, adds that gothic touch to what might otherwise have been a generic family-mystery thriller.
A modern gothic suspense novel done right.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-440-00045-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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