Overburdened, but a daring mix of Jules Verne and the vampire genre.
Third in Farren’s vampire series featuring Victor Renquist (begun with The Time of Feasting, 1996)—although Victor prefers the term “nosferatu” to vampire.
In Darklost (2000), Farren decided to branch off into Lovecraft’s Cthulhu myth, as have dozens of horror fantasists sucking up the Providence master’s purple tints, but he kept the bigger Cthulhu ploys in reserve for Underland. Here, Renquist finds himself kidnapped from Washington’s Watergate complex and bound to a mechanical chair in the bowels of the NSA’s Paranormal Warfare Facility, a laser ready to beam into his brain through an eyeball. As it happens, the 100-year-old Director of the PWF, Herbert Walker Grael, who has his own semi-immortality serum to keep him pumped up and running (with a big Viagra charge thrown in), wants Victor’s help in standing up to, even siphoning off the paranormal powers of, the Cthulhu, a subterranean intelligence first contacted by Apogee’s Council of Nine, who were defeated in the previous installment. First, though, Victor is given Thyme Bridewell (four times dead and returned) to feast from in order to regain his strength. He likes Thyme, who has micro-circuitry implanted in her brain, doesn’t drain her, and, in fact, leaves her as a darklost, halfway between human and nosferatu. Then Grael reveals his object. It seems that the Nazis discovered an Underworld in the Arctic and by 1947 had built flying saucers that operated out of their belowground base. Renquist must now lead a team down under. At Ice Station Zebra in Greenland, the team meets Nazi Underlanders who take them aboard a flying saucer for the journey’s last leg and a Tour of the Fissure, or Underland, a cavern as deep and wide as the Grand Canyon that zigzags about the planet and is connected by trains and monorails. Here is a whole civilization that worships the Serpent, or Dhrakuh, a Central Mind tied to the original Nephilim visitors from outer space.
Overburdened, but a daring mix of Jules Verne and the vampire genre.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-765-30321-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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