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
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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