Thorough research and stylish execution make for a striking tour de force.
A U.S. airman dies and finds himself in limbo after being shot down over Hiroshima in Harmon’s novel (The Paranormalist, 2019, etc.).
Bombardier Micah Lund’s B-29 is on a mission to drop propaganda leaflets over Hiroshima during the campaign against Japan in World War II. Having lost his brother to Japanese fire on Guadalcanal, Micah is set on revenge, openly declaring that “hate doesn’t begin to describe how I feel.” After taking flak, the plane goes down, and the crew attempt a difficult bail out. Kiyomi Oshiro, a young mother and war widow, sees an airman falling through the sky. Micah’s body lands near Kiyomi, and, to the disgust of the attending Japanese military police, she whispers a prayer for him. Micah learns he isn’t in heaven but limbo—a “black void”—when he awakes and discovers a group of soldiers laughing at his dead body. This only intensifies his hatred for the Japanese, yet he is strangely drawn to Kiyomi and follows her. He soon encounters others in limbo and learns that it is possible to communicate with the living. His first thought is to relay intelligence to U.S headquarters, but his unfamiliar emotions for Kiyomi create an opposing pull. Other than the devastating reality that the atomic bomb will be dropped, the reader is given little indication of how the plot will unfold. As Micah observes Japanese civilians, he begins to understand their suffering, as in this elegant description of Kiyomi bathing: “Dirt and grime fell off in black rivulets.…As she eased into the steaming water, he noticed the tautness of her skin, how her stomach concaved and her ribs lay exposed. She’s starving to death, he thought.” The novel becomes in part a thoughtful study of how human connection can challenge racist ideology. Harmon also displays a profound understanding of Japanese culture, drawing on folklore to illuminate what happens beyond the veil: “When a person dies, their soul exits the body in the shape of a bluish ball of light we call a Hitodama.” This is an extraordinarily imaginative and compelling exploration of love, death, race, and patriotism with countless unusual twists to keep the reader guessing.
Thorough research and stylish execution make for a striking tour de force.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-578-59150-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Hall (Waiting for the Flood, 2015, etc.) takes 10,000 geeky inside jokes and weaves them together with the challenges facing...
A young gamer meets the girl of his dreams in a massively multiplayer online game and is surprisingly OK with the discovery that the hot dark elf is a guy IRL.
Drew lives in two different worlds: The Real World, where he’s studying to be a game designer; and “Heroes of Legend,” where he and his avatar, Orcarella, have just joined a new gaming guild. He’s got friends in the real world, but he’d rather hang out with the Guild—particularly Solace, a beautiful healer he finds himself going on separate quests with and having plenty of late-night chats with, too. But now he’s in a crisis. Turns out Solace, his dream girl, isn’t actually a girl. Does Drew like guys? Or just this one? Or even this one? When he finally meets Kit in person, Drew is surprised by how OK he is with the fact that he's a man. The spark they discovered in “Heroes of Legend” is still there, and they're both willing to pursue it. As they fall deeper into a relationship that alternates between making out and playing video games, an intervention by Drew's IRL friends makes him wonder if he's too attached, both to Kit and the game. What starts out as a dense, vaguely tedious online gaming transcript evolves into a deeply real consideration of the ways people choose to pursue their passions and live their lives and people’s perceptions of those ways. The first chapter has the potential to lose marginally interested nongamers, but holding on drops the reader into the mind of Drew, who is at times incredibly well-adjusted and at others completely hopeless—in other words, a pretty authentic college student.
Hall (Waiting for the Flood, 2015, etc.) takes 10,000 geeky inside jokes and weaves them together with the challenges facing young people, whether they're nerdy or not, including game/life balance, understanding different kinds of friendship, and all the stops and starts of coming into yourself.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62649-446-6
Page Count: 345
Publisher: Riptide
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Natural storyteller Hunter knows the value of the occasional poignant scene to give his firefights breathing room. Not for a...
In the category of slam-bang, testosterone-laden, body-bag filling, hellzapoppin' potboilers, this is as good as it gets.
For those who may have wondered about the gene pool that helped produce master sniper Bob Lee Swagger, the author's demigod of a series hero (Time to Hunt, 1998, etc.), here's the tell-all prequel. Earl Swagger, valiant marine, Congressional Medal of Honor winner, is Bob Lee's demigod of a daddy. We also meet Bob Lee's brave and beautiful mama. It's the summer of 1946, and Hot Springs, Arkansas, is under the thumb of gangster Owney Maddox, who has a dream: he wants to refashion Hot Springs into an oasis of sin, a place where Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel, et al., will feel safe, comfortable, and cosseted. He’s halfway there. On the surface Special Prosecutor Fred C. Becker doesn't seem much of a deterrent, but Becker has a dream too: he wants to be Arkansas's youngest governor ever. Moreover, he has a plan: to bring Owney down by recruiting and training an elite task force that can strike hard, fast, and ruthlessly. Earl Swagger—who better?—is charged with the training. At first, things go right. The recruits are eager and motivated. Aided by the element of surprise, they deliver a series of blows that shake the Maddox realm to its Sodom-like foundations. But then Maddox, with the whole of New York gangsterdom to draw from, recruits his own elite force. The stage is set for blood-drenched confrontations, during which lots of bad men are killed, some good men are betrayed, and Earl performs exactly the way Bob Lee's progenitor should.
Natural storyteller Hunter knows the value of the occasional poignant scene to give his firefights breathing room. Not for a minute to be taken seriously, but, all in all, a blast.Pub Date: July 3, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-86360-X
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
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