Zut! The French are the villains in this new futurotechnothriller by Navy veteran and military analyst Bond (Vortex, 1991; Red Phoenix, 1989)—who continues to write battle scenes good enough to keep the old disbelief suspended in a closet somewhere. The setup this time is an economic and military collaboration between France and Germany sometime after the defeat of President Clinton. The Common Market has given way to an unpleasant and unsatisfactory master-slave relationship between the two rich countries and still-poor Eastern Europe, as well as some unhealthy codependency with the Benelux countries and Scandinavia. Then France decides to ship its unwelcome guest workers off to Hungary to replace Hungarian workers in French-owned factories and at the same time sews up a dirty deal with the Germans to take over the continent. War becomes inevitable, and Poland, Slovakia, and the Czechs alone have the nerve to resist. But who cares? Their only friends are the Americans, best known for their dithering and political cowardice. Right? Wrong! America cares. With the help of rich industrialist Ross Huntington III, the President comes up with a tough plan to help those plucky countries hang on and, at the same time, punish the French for their decades of rudeness to tourists. Since France and Germany are old NATO powers, the battle that breaks out pits American-designed weapons and tactics against American-designed weapons and tactics. The Germans are gutsy and well organized, the French arrogant and craven. Trouble is expected from the Russians, whose president has been locked up by a reactionary general. Heroics are provided by, among others, a patriotic Hungarian cop, a Polish-American flyboy, a lovely American commercial analyst, a suave Russian colonel, and a former East German officer. Before everything is sorted out, the French will reach for their nuclear weapons. Rattles along at a nice pace. Gadgetry is subordinated to tactics, and that's to the good. Plenty of tank action for the WW II fans.
Pub Date: June 11, 1993
ISBN: 0-446-51567-1
Page Count: 608
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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