by Matthew Reilly ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2008
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
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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