Highly enjoyable when in all-out-action mode, though it tends to get stuck in the lower gears.
In this two-fisted melodrama, the debacle of the Bay of Pigs invasion is only the start of the troubles facing a luckless Cuban counterrevolutionary who, following the awful kidnapping of his beloved daughter, becomes the frustrated puppet of a nasty KGB officer.
Atcho, the son of a wealthy Cuban landowner, lost everything—including his wife and father—when Fidel Castro and company seized control of his tiny island homeland. Since then, the naturally embittered hero has valiantly tried to shield his surviving child, Isabelle, from further harm, while he leads a small band of counterinsurgents equally committed to tossing out the cigar-chomping communist. However, for the anti-Castro crowd, betting on the United States to fully back their play turns out to be a bad move: Atcho is ultimately captured and summarily sent to a series of hellish island prisons. West Point–educated and almost supernaturally gifted in the art of combat, he manages to survive decades of incarceration and a failed prison break only to confront an even bleaker reality being orchestrated by Govorov, a KGB heavy. Part war saga, part prison drama, this sometimes adrenaline-fueled adventure yarn is loaded with punchy prose: “Atcho sprang. Cupping his hand over the guard’s mouth, he pulled the man down and broke his neck.” Too quickly, however, Atcho’s bone-breaking odyssey loses its footing on the slippery slopes of soap opera–like setups best exemplified in the mushy relationship between father and daughter. Initially loving and welcoming, long-lost Isabelle considers flipping on dear old dad, seemingly at a point when some interpersonal drama is deemed necessary to counterbalance all the shooting and neck-breaking. Marinating in his own twisted machinations, and endlessly self-satisfied, Govorov also suffers from a stock portrayal that relegates him to the ranks of so many other dastardly but unexamined villains. Atcho is at his best when he’s being Atcho—taking names and kicking ass.
Highly enjoyable when in all-out-action mode, though it tends to get stuck in the lower gears.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0989802574
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Stonewall Publishers, LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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