A fast-paced, thoughtful adventure likely to please sci-fi fans.
In this sci-fi adventure novel, an interplanetary probe heading for Pluto reveals that part of the solar system is missing.
In Donovan’s debut, a provincial president of the United States relegates space exploration to the back burner when he orders draconian budget cuts to NASA. Fortunately, Jake Conrad, who heads up the New Horizons project, is allowed to see his mission through to fruition—an interplanetary probe two years out from a rendezvous with Pluto. Good thing, too, as Conrad’s team discovers an incredible anomaly in the Kuiper Belt on the outskirts of the solar system: The dwarf planet Eris and its satellite, Dysnomia, seem to be gone. The team soon discovers that the two planets have joined together to form an alien spacecraft, which aims to harvest the entire solar system, including Earth. The novel follows a diverse group of nine people as they’re brought together in an effort to save mankind. Donovan introduces each in his or her own chapter, creating sympathetic, three-dimensional characters without bogging down the narrative. Each is dissatisfied with their present-day life and yearning for more, and the New Horizons discovery provides each with their life’s calling. Along the way, three of the protagonists—Kate Runningfox, an intern for the Kuiper Belt Research Team; Mike Spence, a former Shuttle Commander, and Cecilia Behl, a microbiologist—ultimately help the aliens’ highly advanced artificial intelligence communicate with the people of Earth. Donovan’s prose is crisp, and the novel’s pacing is sharp, but there are a few occasions where the narrative stumbles. For example, some of her characters’ disdain for religion makes for some forced-sounding dialogue (“That’s what’s so great about this country. You have the freedom to handle this however you want. But what you don’t have is the right to force your views on me!”). At one point, an antimatter explosion creates a mile-wide crater in Texas, the government explains it away as a uranium “accident,” and, somehow, it only lasts a month in the news cycle. However, the overall story is so intriguing that readers are likely to shrug off any incredulity.
A fast-paced, thoughtful adventure likely to please sci-fi fans.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2013
ISBN: B00BEB5BDA
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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