A thrilling read that will appeal to young and old readers.
Scandalios’ debut novel is a high-seas adventure set during the American Revolution.
In many ways, Scandalios’ novel reads like the diet version of The Count of Monte Cristo—a tale of revenge and treasure hunting played out against a backdrop of rolling seas and clanging swords. While Scandalios’ novel may lack the grandeur and epic sweep of Dumas’ classic, his effort makes up for it with a page-turning plot and likable characters. Mathew Carrigan, the son of a legendary captain in the British Royal Navy, is a gifted young man in his own right. After his father dies under suspicious circumstances on a secret mission to recover a massive treasure, Carrigan starts to unravel the mystery surrounding his father’s death. Eventually defecting from the Royal Navy to join the cause of the Americans during the Revolutionary War, he takes control of the Sea Dragon, a one-of-a-kind ship that has a devastating secret weapon. Carrigan, renamed Quicksilver, becomes a legendary privateer who contributes directly to the American’s victory. Scandalios fills the novel to the brim with action scenes, plot twists and high tension. He often writes in the vernacular of a modern action film, which gives his battle scenes a high-speed, cinematic urgency. Readers can expect vivid images of cannonballs flying through the air and acrobatic pirates fighting with two swords at once. The book accomplishes the rare feat of seamlessly blending several fiction genres: action, mystery, suspense, romance and even comedy. Carrigan makes for a charming protagonist and readers will feel invested in his quest for revenge. However, Carrigan has an almost superhuman ability to get himself out of tough situations; readers may have difficulty believing that Carrigan is ever truly in danger after he overcomes a string of impossible circumstances.
A thrilling read that will appeal to young and old readers.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-1466314795
Page Count: 340
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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