Millard’s earnest novel offers a carefully researched tour of Bronze Age religions through the eyes of Tariel, a wanderer who is skeptical and searching.
During his initiation ceremony, 15-year-old Tariel undergoes a painful, unsettling experience. Expecting to find his place in the village, he instead finds he must leave home altogether—on the run for his life. His travels take him from the Caucasus Mountains down the Euphrates, along the Persian Gulf, into India and even to the mythical kingdom of Shambala in Tibet. As he tries to earn a living over the years (including stints as a rent collector and a pirate), he also searches for spiritual truths from the teachers, priests, shamans and gurus he meets along the way, braced by his natural skepticism. (When the god Marduk is credited with helpful intervention in a battle, Tariel comments, “None of this made much sense to me, since all my life, I had seen that talent and practice make a good archer.”) By the end, he comes to understand the meaning of his adventures in and out of the spirit world. Debut novelist Millard (Adjunct Lecturer in English, SUNY Geneseo) has clearly done his homework, and the reader can learn much about the state of Bronze Age religions and cultures in the Near East and India. The details can be fascinating. Sometimes, though, it feels like homework, when each new set of beliefs that Tariel encounters is dutifully described. As an adventure novel, the book too often has the plodding, clunky feel of an official report: “The Arch Pirate questioned the man intently about the gold shipments and had other crew members brought forward to provide additional information.” Or this, from an action scene: “Since the river was wide…we were still out of range. In contrast, my bow from Mardaman was larger and more powerful.” When Millard employs a lighter touch, as with the grumpy wise man Ashapa or the pleasure-loving prince Nala, the journey is more enjoyable. An informative travelogue of Bronze Age cultures and beliefs that could benefit from a more seamless blending of facts and fiction.
Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-1461117971
Page Count: 357
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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