A charming flight of fancy that provides a pleasant, thoughtful diversion.
A time-travel fantasy that transports four teenage cave dwellers to modern-day Los Angeles.
Luber’s (Match to the Heart, 2009) fictional Kishoki people live 10,000 years ago in an unspecified location near the River Gan. They’re hunters and gatherers, and the harsh conditions have led most of their people to leave their settlement in search of something better. Others took the advice of their shaman, Man Who Stands Alone, not to follow the “Antelope People” who left. But if nothing changes, the remaining group will die out completely. Enter Sita, the spiritual leader of an adventurous pack of 14-year olds who are about to take a journey through time and space. She’s a “star stepper” who sees bits and pieces of the future in her dreams. She’s also a “shaman-in-waiting,” the first girl to ever be in such a position. Her boyfriend, Ty, is an adventurer who’s determined to find the long-departed Antelope People and learn their secrets of survival. Ko and Shum, Ty’s “wings” (buddies), agree to accompany him in his search. After they encounter a deadly “emmydactyl” and drink a potion mixed by Sita, they awake to find themselves in the 21st century on a hilltop where the neurotic, 24-year-old Darren Davies is shooting a commercial for his father’s carpet empire. The narrative explores the friendship that develops among Darren, Ty, and Sita, as each seeks his or her identity and purpose. Luber has constructed a lighthearted romp that’s permeated by humor regarding adolescent antics, 20-something angst, and a wealth of inevitable culture-clash misunderstandings. But it also deals with some serious issues, including modern-day bigotry (the Kishoki are a dark-skinned people), the sometimes-troubled relationships between parents and offspring, and the need to find and follow one’s own truth. The author’s Kishoki words are inventive, although the translations sometimes seem frivolous: “ ‘Shnikee!’ she gasped, Kishoki for ‘yikes.’ ” Some “Questions for Discussion” appended to the end also seem unnecessary, unless Luber intends the book to be read in schools.
A charming flight of fancy that provides a pleasant, thoughtful diversion.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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