Full of adventure, history, and passion, this tale delivers an exciting ride through the gold rush with a singular hero.
A Mexican bandit tells the story of his life as a lover and an outlaw in 19th-century California in this novel.
The California Rangers have finally killed the notorious Joaquín Murrieta, horse thief, murderer, and the scourge of the Old West. They have preserved his severed head in a jar of whiskey to present it to the authorities to collect a handsome reward. Joaquín, still sentient, notes wryly, “When whiskey goes to your head it is not so bad really...if you no longer have a stomach.” Joaquín proceeds to relate his rather colorful life story, starting in a small village in Sonora. He grows up among scorpions and a threatening panther in a world steeped in magic and folklore. As a teen, he spends three years learning to track and capture mustangs before returning home to marry his beloved Rosita. He and Rosita and three others decide to head north to California, arriving in San Francisco in the 1840s, early enough that they can still pick sizable gold nuggets out of the ground. The environment they inhabit is at first ideal but soon turns rough, yet the stallionlike Joaquín is undeterred. Settling in a secret valley, Joaquín steals horses and other people’s gold for a living, survives innumerable dicey encounters, and gains a reputation as a menace to society. Frustrated by gringo law and the Rangers, who are constantly pursuing him, Joaquín devises one last plot to take California for all it is worth and triumphantly ride back to Sonora with Rosita. But the Rangers have other plans for the bandit. Litton’s (Geminga: Sword of the Shining Path, 2016) novel has an irresistible premise, and the preserved head of the infamous Joaquín as narrator works very well, particularly in the book’s almost serene conclusion. The characters are fiery and real, and the indefatigable Joaquín has as much passion and even sweetness as he does bloodlust. Drenched in Mexican lore and California history, the story stands out for its convincing portrayal of the time period’s diverse competing interests and for its Spanish-laced prose, which has many wonderful lines. But the book is a bit long and somewhat overwritten; a more concise narrative would have helped to highlight the novel’s key events.
Full of adventure, history, and passion, this tale delivers an exciting ride through the gold rush with a singular hero.Pub Date: July 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-941408-65-0
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Crossroad Press Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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