In this first installment of Johnson-Weider’s planned series, superheroes battle villains for sponsors and media attention on an alternate-history Earth where supers are organized by city like professional sports teams.
Before the 2013 super-season begins, a fatal attack by an unknown evil-doer (some suspect a mole) drops the West Pacific Supers’ rank in the West Coast conference. To win the title and protect the citizens of West Pacific, Calif., Seawolf, White Knight, Starfish and their unflappable operations director, Dr. Sterling, need to rebuild the WPS quickly. Using draft picks and old favors, they manage to get a top-tier rookie and an aging ladies man under contract. Seawolf is even able to bully Nova Woman (who’s given up her secret identity and goes by “Camille” now) to move back to the coast. On top of the stress of finding commercial sponsors, doing PR events and surviving Sterling’s infamously depraved training sessions, the new members bring with them plenty of personal baggage—which is to say, they’ll fit right in with the other misfits and mutants. But there’s plenty of crime for everyone to fight this season—a geological expert with military-grade explosives and an offshore lair is out to literally change the face of the world, and a madman calling himself “Mr. Darwin” has decided that it’s time for the WPS to go extinct. As exciting as that sounds, the author (like the “superazzi” in the story) is so focused on the supers’ private lives that the villains’ plots are relegated to mere distractions until the final fourth of the book. That feeling is reinforced by the way the heroes undercut the dramatic impact of their heroics by treating the citizens like nothing more than faceless opportunities to boost their stats. Despite these missteps, the well-imagined world and strong cast of do-gooders save the debut novel and will keep readers interested through the epilogue by offering new takes on surprisingly human personal struggles, like a less cynical Watchmen with more likable characters. Clever, fun and occasionally tense, but in more ways than one the West Pacific Supers are their own worst enemy.
Pub Date: June 29, 2011
ISBN: 978-0983798415
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Blue Moon Aurora, LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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