A fantastical graphic novel with superlative artwork and inventive plot devices that’s somewhat marred by inadequate...
Writer Wolf (Unbeatable: Hotter than Hell, 2010, etc.), debut illustrator Jimenez, and debut colorist Cabellé ingeniously combine Arthurian legend and epic space opera in a new graphic novel.
Young Cat is sent to an orphanage after her father inexplicably attempts to drown her. Thereafter, her story doesn’t get much happier, as her fellow orphans mercilessly bully her. She eventually snaps and pummels the other children, exhibiting innate fighting prowess while doing so. Enter the wizard Merlin, who snatches her away from the orphanage in order to train her with the Protectors of the Sword, a warrior guild devoted to keeping Excalibur safe after the death of King Arthur. Cat eventually proves herself as Excalibur’s Keeper, destined to wield the weapon until the emergence of the rightful king. However, when she claims the weapon, it upsets a demonic underground being who sends his minions to stop her. The story goes on to turn tropes of the Arthurian legend on their heads in plot twists involving spacecraft, mecha-suited warriors, and the lost city of Atlantis. Cat is aided by Heinz, her only friend from the orphanage, who grows from a pudgy, scrappy child into a brawny love interest. What could have been a random hodgepodge of genre tropes instead becomes a unique alternative history of Excalibur. However, Wolf doesn’t sketch Cat’s psyche beyond her sadness and her outsized fighting abilities, which results in some disorienting character beats: she slaughters most of the men she grew up with on Merlin’s command, for example, yet experiences no apparent emotional fallout. The author spends a little more time on Heinz, who charmingly spends the entire book wearing a flowered purple hat—a gift from his dead father. Generally, though, characterization takes a back seat to plot movement and extended battle sequences. Jimenez and Cabellé produce some gorgeous, dynamic pages; high points include a scene involving monsters interrupting a farmer’s peaceful morning and a clever “training montage” of Cat fighting across multiple panels, each set in a different season. The book’s high-quality, glossy paper allows Cabellé’s broad color spectrum to shine.
A fantastical graphic novel with superlative artwork and inventive plot devices that’s somewhat marred by inadequate characterization.Pub Date: July 31, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9798689-2-4
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Razor Wolf Entertainment
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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