An unevenly executed but well-plotted disaster novel that may have readers looking to the skies in fear of what’s to come.
In McCoy’s debut novel, a physicist discovers a deadly coverup of potentially earth-shattering proportions.
Astrophysicist Rick Munday works as an assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology, but today he’s mostly been refreshing his email to see if he’s been approved for a grant to fund his research into “potential risks to Earth from asteroids.” With his meager salary, he can barely provide for his wife, Courtney, and their twins, Alyssa and Ethan. His grant proposal, however, has caught the eye of a much more important organization—and soon, he gets dragged into a secret plot that leads to the highest levels of government. It turns out that asteroids have, in fact, been hitting Earth at an alarmingly fast rate, and the government is having a hard time trying to clean up evidence of their existence to avoid a panic. They’ve even made deaths from meteorite debris look like murder-suicides and covered up massive impacts in other countries. Now Rick is in their grasp, and he has to find a way to escape, get back home to his family, and warn the world of impending disaster before it’s too late. McCoy offers a hefty, in-depth adventure novel with a compelling premise. The overabundance of characters, though, may keep the book from turning into a favorite of disaster-fiction fans, as it becomes difficult to keep all the players straight. Minor and even throwaway figures receive an undue amount of attention, and the nearly constant character introductions in the first part of the novel adversely affect the pacing, making it slow going initially. Readers who persevere, though, will be rewarded with a truly original and creative plot, which makes the effort worthwhile.
An unevenly executed but well-plotted disaster novel that may have readers looking to the skies in fear of what’s to come.Pub Date: April 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73363-073-3
Page Count: 524
Publisher: Blaster Tech
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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