by Marvin Amazon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 23, 2013
An often involving but ultimately uneven sci-fi tale.
A sci-fi novel about the pressures of motherhood that transforms into an action thriller about an alien invasion.
In 2043, Rachel Harris is one of the only women who’s been able to give birth naturally in nearly 40 years. Worldwide infertility has made other women unable to conceive children of their own. But when Rachel’s child dies in an accident, her friends patronize her, her husband neglects her, and the world can’t stop talking about her. However, most people don’t know that government doctors have performed countless medical experiments on her in the search for an infertility cure; it’s taken a tremendous toll on her body and made her addicted to special medication. Meanwhile, as Rachel struggles to make sense of her loss, desperate couples play the Worldwide Lotto in hopes of winning a child from the future through the use of time travel. Rachel’s husband enters both their names and gets lucky on the first try, but soon, Rachel starts to uncover a conspiracy regarding the infertility problem. During her investigation, when she breaks the law by watching a video message from the future, the government threatens to sentence her husband, friends and possibly her new adopted son, Dylan, to death. Soon, she must return to the year 2013 to expose an alien menace and grapple with whether her convictions are worth sacrificing a second chance at motherhood. Amazon (The Corin Chronicles: Volume 1: The Light and the Dark, 2012, etc.) creates a intriguing character in Rachel, whose many misfortunes and desires will likely elicit readers’ sympathy and interest. But the engaging sci-fi premise, told from a woman’s perspective, eventually turns into a clichéd thriller, comprised of multiple action sequences, bland dialogue and supporting characters that lack Rachel’s complexity. That said, the book does have a resonating beginning, and its final chapters will surprise readers with a perplexing ending that may make them re-examine their ideas of motherhood and identity.
An often involving but ultimately uneven sci-fi tale.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-0957624429
Page Count: 518
Publisher: Corinthians Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 27, 2024
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.
A bear is hunting prey in Wyoming’s Bighorns. And not just any bear.
It’s bad enough that Clay Hutmacher, who manages the Double Diamond Ranch, has lost his son, Clay Jr., to a vicious attack by a grizzly bear. What’s much worse is that Clay Jr.—who’d been about to pop the question to game warden Joe Pickett’s daughter, Sheridan—is only the first of the victims over an exceptionally broad geographical area. Marshal Marvin Bertignolli is clawed and bitten to death over in Hanna. Sgt. Ryan Winner is found bleeding out north of Rawlins. Former Twelve Sleep County prosecutor Dulcie Schalk, one of two survivors of an ambush, doesn’t survive her final encounter. The four experts chosen to kill the grizzly rope Joe into their expedition, but since their quarry keeps turning up far from the last sighting, the most meaningful confrontation the Predator Attack Team has is with a pair of Mama Bears, animal rights activists who demand due process for Tisiphone, as they’ve dubbed the presumed killer. Box, who’s far too canny to leave Tisiphone alone on center stage, follows Joe’s old antagonist Dallas Cates as the ex–rodeo star is released from prison and embarks on his revenge tour, which takes him to Lee Ogburn-Russell, an inventor whose life Dallas saved, and Axel Soledad, a correspondent who shares so many enemies with Dallas that he suggests they go after them together. Franchise fans will appreciate new details about Joe’s complicated family, the obligatory high-country landscapes, and yet another corrupt law enforcer.
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593331347
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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