Comic-strip horror novel padded with science fantasy and no sex trimmings. Clements's debut, the paperback 6:02, was a 1988 nominee for the Bram Stoker Award. A brilliant idea runs aground as genetically engineered Alien- like humanoids run amok with religion. Joint Nobel-winners Dr. George Irving Prendergast, a biologist, neurologist, and microsurgeon, and Dr. Charles Carlton, a molecular biologist and early computer expert, whose shared prize for recombinant DNA allows them to found BioEdge, one of the world's most successful biotech companies, come up with a secret new computer chip—the biochip, made from human DNA, with which they create vaguely human monsters called Loners. Carlton apparently commits suicide, but Prendergast, a religious nut, feeds the world's religions into Vulcan, the original Loner, who becomes the Christ of the monsters. Prendergast plans to release the bloodgurglers, which have huge grinding jaws much like the Alien's of film fame, to rid the world of two thirds of its population and bring mankind back to Arcadia when the population levels settle between man and monster. But the Loners, who are force-fed TV commercials and sitcoms, mean to establish their own rule. Amusingly, the blood-soaked, bone- crushing monsters, who can change from their normal bird-legged hopping shape to human form, forever gabble away in Christian fundamentalism and cry jovially ``Ah wan mah Em Tee Vee!'' and ``And out of his mouth came a sharrrrp two-edged sssworrrrd. Neverrrr needs sharrrrpening.'' When Deborah Kosarek, a biomedical tech writer for Prendergast, finds herself laboriously rewriting a program that has crashed, and inadvertently enters the computer for the monsters, she and her baby fall into hot water with the baby- gobbling loners and must be protected by security officer Tony Garwood, who, by novel's end, is walking hamburger. Slurrrp!—or your money back.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1993
ISBN: 1-55611-342-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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