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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
