A vividly imagined but dark dystopian fantasy complete with passionate romance and dangerous alliances.
An intrepid pair has survived the apocalypse, but the worst is yet to come in Roen’s sequel to Last Call for Caviar (2013).
Maya Jade and her lover, Julian, have fled their temporary place of refuge on the French Riviera. Fearing for their safety, they head toward Italy in a battered Land Rover full of weapons and provisions; but Maya cannot escape the dangers she encountered during her time mingling among the Riviera’s jet set. She’s being followed by Slava, a Russian who runs a human-trafficking ring. Julian’s skill as a physician secures the couple safe passage into Italy and finally to the Hautes-Alpes, where he treats the locals and refugees. While Julian is out on an emergency call, an earthquake strikes the area, cutting off all lines of communication. Desperate to find him, Maya enlists the help of Stephan and Laurent, two French military paratroopers. They discover that Julian has been kidnapped by a ruthless and bloodthirsty captain named Jacques Richmond, who’s in league with Slava and planning a covert operation in Monaco. Maya soon realizes her only hope for saving Julian lies with her former lover Abdul. As she renews alliances and faces old dangers in her efforts to free Julian, Maya realizes her feelings for Abdul are more complicated than she had thought. Told in a series of journal entries that span the years 2018-2019, this sequel seamlessly picks up where Last Call for Caviar left off, and the narrative moves with the same intensity. The action is gripping, but there is a grimmer edge to the tragedies unfolding around Maya and Julian. The storms and other ecological disasters have continued unabated, and the desperation and lawlessness have resulted in shocking acts of violence, including rape and cannibalism. Once again, erotic romance plays a major role in the story. Although Maya never questions her love for Julian, she remains conflicted about her feelings toward Abdul. This conflict helps form the basis for an erotic and nuanced love triangle as her involvement with Abdul deepens.
A vividly imagined but dark dystopian fantasy complete with passionate romance and dangerous alliances.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5171-5744-9
Page Count: 360
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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