In the morally complex genre of superheroes, this tale deftly delivers hope and optimism.
In this YA sci-fi debut, a powerful teen attends college to train his body and mind in helping others.
College freshman Gabriel Green of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, can move objects with his mind. He’s one of many whose superpowers stem from the transits of Venus, which bathe the Earth in gamma radiation filtered through the planet’s atmosphere. In selecting a college, Gabriel decides on the Saboth Institute of America because it offers classes that help gifted individuals hone their abilities. It’s also the home of the famous Dr. Drake, a scientific giant in the field of studying the gifted. On the way, Gabriel’s telekinesis saves the lives of his family during a car accident, bolstering his decision to train. At SIA, he meets his roommate, Jake Burns, a pyrokinetic, and 16-year-old intern Simon Cruz, who can communicate with machines. Gabriel refines his telekinesis under Coach V, and later helps Jake and Simon conduct experiments that will allow Jake better access and control over fire. Gabriel’s also enchanted by a red-haired musician named Serena. But around campus, there’s chatter of students vanishing for unexplained stretches of time. When Serena disappears, Gabriel and his friends leap into action. What they discover cuts to the core of the institute. In his novel, Valencia skillfully pitches his tent in X-Men territory, albeit presenting a world that doesn’t necessarily fear and hate those with powers. Gifted individuals mix in schools across the nation with regular students. Nevertheless, Gabriel chooses his role model, the dedicated Coach V, “not because of things he did, but because of the kind of man he was.” The upbeat narrative introduces a unique caveat in the form of Ferentheil’s laws, which say “that no one can hurt themselves with their own gift.” With a gentle ramp-up to an action-filled finale, the buoyant story flows more like a novella. But readers may feel that smartphone use is underutilized in the plot overall (considering the teenage cast), despite the vivid exploration of Simon’s powers in the end.
In the morally complex genre of superheroes, this tale deftly delivers hope and optimism.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-973604-97-6
Page Count: 162
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2018
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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