A well-conceived, exciting story that will satisfy those looking for some emotion in their time-travel tales.
A classic time-travel plot gets a modern spin in this debut novel.
Sam should have been set to marry the love of his life, Justin. Instead, he’s standing in his apartment wondering where Justin has disappeared. Justin’s mother, Peg, is only marginally helpful, as she loathes Sam almost as much as Sam loathes her. She points out that Justin would always talk about his travels in Japan as some of the best times of his life, so Sam goes to Japan to search for him. In a separate plotline, Sam finds himself in his childhood bedroom in his childhood body—but with the mind and experiences of his 38-year-old physician self. With his knowledge of the future, and specifically of his brother Hal’s murder, he sets out to change that most painful moment of his life. With the help of his school counselor, Betty, who believes young Sam when he spouts very adult language, he endeavors to save his brother from his fate. But can one person change the course of the future? And what if changing one thing renders the rest of Sam’s life impossible? As the narratives start to intertwine, Sam will discover how destiny and self-determination balance out to create the story of one’s life. Debut author Chambers effectively weaves together the two stories, creating tension between a man searching for love and a boy who may lack the power to alter his situation. The novel sets a consistent tone as cynical Sam starts to allow the mysteries of life and love to color his understanding of himself and others. Although the prose falls squarely into the thriller genre, there’s a thread of sentiment that rescues it from being pure pulp: “He looked like his heart had been broken so thoroughly that there wasn’t even a chance it could be repaired. Not even with all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.” Fans of both speculative fiction and contemporary thrillers will enjoy this addition to both genres.
A well-conceived, exciting story that will satisfy those looking for some emotion in their time-travel tales.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Damnation Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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