A sometimes-compelling tale of superpowered operatives that occasionally gets lost in technical jargon.
When the president of the United States announces that he has a brain tumor, a veteran with supernatural abilities makes it his mission to help him recover in Agliolo’s thriller.
Jason Marino, an honorably discharged Navy lieutenant–turned–day trader, is an empath who can not only experience others’ pain, but also use this connection to help them recover from injury or illness. His life “is centered around the ‘pull’ ”—an inexplicable urge that directs him to people who need his help. His ability to heal others doesn’t come without consequences, though; he’s chosen to keep it a secret in order to protect himself and his loved ones, but his secrecy eventually ruined his marriage and rendered him something of a loner. His best friend, Ted, introduces him to a woman named Sarah, and she and Jason experience an immediate romantic connection. Eventually, Sarah tells Jason, Ted, and Ted’s wife, Leslie, that she’s precognitive, which allows her to have accurate dreams of the future. Her abilities bring her and Jason closer, so when he sets out to heal the president from his stage 3 tumor, he asks her to come along. What they both don’t realize is that this is just the first step of a mission to save the world from a catastrophic threat. Over the course of this paranormal thriller, Agliolo immerses readers in the action by often employing very short snippets of dialogue, which allows the reader to feel each moment’s urgency. However, there are other times when the author overdramatizes the action and loads it with excessive detail, as when a submarine ensign tries to explain the next steps of a mission: “The capacitance accelerometer senses changes between microstructures…the accelerometer will translate that capacitance to voltage for interpretation….” Moments such as these can make one’s attention wander, and they make it easy to miss important story elements.
A sometimes-compelling tale of superpowered operatives that occasionally gets lost in technical jargon.Pub Date: March 6, 2020
ISBN: 979-8622244834
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.
A disturbing household secret has far-reaching consequences in this dark, unusual ghost story.
Mallory Quinn, fresh out of rehab and recovering from a recent tragedy, has taken a job as a nanny for an affluent couple living in the upscale suburb of Spring Brook, New Jersey, when a series of strange events start to make her (and her employers) question her own sanity. Teddy, the precocious and shy 5-year-old boy she's charged with watching, seems to be haunted by a ghost who channels his body to draw pictures that are far too complex and well formed for such a young child. At first, these drawings are rather typical: rabbits, hot air balloons, trees. But then the illustrations take a dark turn, showcasing the details of a gruesome murder; the inclusion of the drawings, which start out as stick figures and grow increasingly more disturbing and sophisticated, brings the reader right into the story. With the help of an attractive young gardener and a psychic neighbor and using only the drawings as clues, Mallory must solve the mystery of the house's grizzly past before it's too late. Rekulak does a great job with character development: Mallory, who narrates in the first person, has an engaging voice; the Maxwells' slightly overbearing parenting style and passive-aggressive quips feel very familiar; and Teddy is so three-dimensional that he sometimes feels like a real child.
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-81934-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.
The master of supernatural disaster returns with four horror-laced novellas.
The protagonist of the title story, Holly Gibney, is by King’s own admission one of his most beloved characters, a “quirky walk-on” who quickly found herself at the center of some very unpleasant goings-on in End of Watch, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider. The insect-licious proceedings of the last are revisited, most yuckily, while some of King’s favorite conceits turn up: What happens if the dead are never really dead but instead show up generation after generation, occupying different bodies but most certainly exercising their same old mean-spirited voodoo? It won’t please TV journalists to know that the shape-shifting bad guys in that title story just happen to be on-the-ground reporters who turn up at very ugly disasters—and even cause them, albeit many decades apart. Think Jack Torrance in that photo at the end of The Shining, and you’ve got the general idea. “Only a coincidence, Holly thinks, but a chill shivers through her just the same,” King writes, “and once again she thinks of how there may be forces in this world moving people as they will, like men (and women) on a chessboard.” In the careful-what-you-wish-for department, Rat is one of those meta-referential things King enjoys: There are the usual hallucinatory doings, a destiny-altering rodent, and of course a writer protagonist who makes a deal with the devil for success that he thinks will outsmart the fates. No such luck, of course. Perhaps the most troubling story is the first, which may cause iPhone owners to rethink their purchases. King has gone a far piece from the killer clowns and vampires of old, with his monsters and monstrosities taking on far more quotidian forms—which makes them all the scarier.
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.Pub Date: April 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3797-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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