A semiconclusive entry in a lightweight science-minded series.
In Smith’s (A Jack in the Dark, 2018, etc.) latest sci-fi series installment, physics professor Madison Martin’s former student may be using her reality-bending technique for large-scale vandalism.
In the last book in this series, Boulder, Colorado–based college instructor Martin grappled with villains who misused her breakthrough technique, “q-lapsing.” It involves using mind power, adrenaline, and quantum physics to alter reality to a chosen outcome—such as disintegrating the door to a bank vault. Martin’s expertise resulted in her becoming a special consultant to the police and FBI, tentatively training lawmen to use her process for a range of tasks. Now she, as the “Quantum Cop,” must assist them again following another outbreak of mischief—this time involving the eradication of a mining ghost town and the dissolution of a highway. The apparent perpetrator is Luke Bacalli, Martin’s foremost ex-student-gone-bad, whom she thought she’d killed in a quantum duel. Despite the fact that the material universe is at risk, Smith’s tone remains chirpy and playful, and in side plots, Martin’s long-standing love affair with faculty colleague Andro Rivas cools and her attraction to police officer Ben Willis heats up. The motivation for the large-scale destruction isn’t explained, and the behavior of the villains, who alternate between being maniacal and panicked, seems inconsistent, but these questions may be addressed in a future installment. Q-lapsing, in narrative terms, feels very much like spellcasting despite repeated assertions that it’s all based in science (“I concentrated and collapsed the wavefunction, instantiating the reality in which I’d followed this particular improbability to its source”). As is her habit, Smith, a real-life physicist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, concludes this flighty tale with a lucid nonfiction physics essay; this time around, it’s about neutrinos even though they only have a small cameo in the text.
A semiconclusive entry in a lightweight science-minded series.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9973131-9-2
Page Count: 325
Publisher: Quarky Media
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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