Basically a video game in print. Exhausting.
With the sun’s evil twin headed straight for the Earth, our planet’s fate is in the balance, but ancient codes and monuments may hold the key for a way out of the seemingly inevitable intra-galactic smashup.
The age-, sex- and race-balanced team from Reilly’s 2006 thrill-a-second novel 7 Deadly Wonders returns, still under the management of handily bionic and super resourceful Australian Commando Jack West. West, who has a titanium left hand, has barely been able to catch his breath from the rigors of his most recent hyperadventures when his quiet time on the isolated ranch in Northern Australia with cute (and brilliant) adopted daughter Lily and her equally cute and brilliant little black chum Alby is interrupted by an invasion of parachuting Chinese soldiers itching to kill our hero and his little friends. The airborne Asian horde have orders to capture the golden capstone of the great pyramid at Giza, a little souvenir from West’s recent labors. After a hair-raising escape—the first of a steady stream of uninterrupted hair-raising escapes—Jack reunites with his action team on board his private and well-armed Boeing 747 and heads to the United Arab Emirates for a skull session to figure out why the world’s mega-powers want that pyramidal capstone. The capstone turns out to be just one of a half-dozen bits and pieces with historic ties to ancient empires which, when popped into just the right spot on just the right day, will give the holder fabulous power, wealth, skills and abilities while somehow averting the predestined collision of the Earth and that nasty black hole headed to Earth. Pursued at every step by ruthless teams of power-mad Chinese and Americans, including West’s nasty father, Jack, the gang race the clock to Stonehenge, Egypt, Rwanda and South Africa, decoding ancient clues and dodging cannibals and prehistoric booby traps to rescue Mankind from oblivion.
Basically a video game in print. Exhausting.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7432-7054-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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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