A fun read but one that’s rough around the edges.
In Ewers’ (EVO Uprising, 2015) novel, a woman is stronger than steel, can heal almost instantly, and can leap tall buildings in a single bound, but she’s not sure if she’s a superhero.
The last four years of Sophia Dennison’s life have been hell. After she’s convicted of the murder of her husband, Robert, a former Marine and Iraq War veteran, she’s sentenced to death. She spends four years in prison before she’s executed by lethal injection. However, things don’t go according to plan: not only does Sophia come back to life, she comes back taller and stronger than she was before. Every time she’s hit by a bullet, she becomes more impervious to harm. After she breaks out of prison, FBI agent Mark Armitage is assigned to find out what happened and track Sophia down, but he soon finds himself stymied by a mysterious team of investigators—“Men in Black” who are also working for the government. Ewers alternates scenes of Mark’s angry puzzlement with those of Sophia’s righteous rage as she tries to find out who did this to her and why, as well as who really killed her husband. This makes for a fast-paced novel that sweeps readers along. Although many of Sophia’s superpowers may seem familiar to comic-book fans, Ewers takes enough care with the worldbuilding that it all feels relatively fresh. The author can certainly write a thrilling action scene and injects just the right amount of self-awareness into this superhero narrative (“Glasses pulled the outfit together; she figured if it worked in the comic books, it would work for her”). The only stumbling blocks are the novel’s many grammatical errors, which too frequently bring the flow of the story to a grinding halt: “Before he can finish his sentence, the ground exploded behind him.” Readers may find it very difficult to ignore them, but the story itself remains enjoyable.
A fun read but one that’s rough around the edges.Pub Date: July 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-615-83669-0
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Evo Universe
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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