by Lesley L. Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 2017
Skulduggery, sex, and Shakespeare abound in a sci-fi tale full of sound and fury, signifying fun.
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A murdered secret agent is cloned and sent back to the stars to undertake more missions—including investigating his own killing—in the first installment of Smith’s (Kat Cubed, 2016) Space Operetta series.
Fifty-year-old Jack Jones was a spacegoing entertainer—not only Earth’s greatest singer, but also its cultural ambassador to other civilizations in deep space, bringing them such things as Gilbert and Sullivan tunes. But while onboard the mighty starship Shakespeare with his wife, Gina, and a troupe of performers, Jones had another, more sinister role as an undercover assassin. After bullets cut him down, he’s quickly cloned by the Terran Cultural Committee—but in his downloaded memories, the last 32 years of recollections are somehow missing. Physically and mentally, he’s now a strapping, sexually active 18-year-old who must relearn his training and, if possible, solve his own murder. His masquerade as “Jack Junior,” his own long-lost son, doesn’t last long, though, especially with his baleful wife. Soon there are more mysterious deaths as the ship goes from planet to planet on a show circuit. Overall, Smith serves up a lot of sex, derring-do, and Shakespeare references in this pulpy sci-fi title. It’s certainly a lighthearted lark (complete with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shoutout), although it overdoes the adolescent humor, even if it is by design. In one twist, a faulty starship drive based on “quantum entanglement and improbabilities” may be causing unlikely events and out-of-character behavior—a cute idea but one that Douglas Adams hit first and better in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Still, there’s a great last-act reveal regarding Jack’s antagonist and even a concluding nonfiction essay on the physics used in the story, as polymath Smith has a doctorate in particle physics.
Skulduggery, sex, and Shakespeare abound in a sci-fi tale full of sound and fury, signifying fun.Pub Date: April 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9973131-3-0
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Quarky Media
Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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