A subdued urban narrative that neither minces words nor pulls punches.
In Sidanius’ debut novel, a Los Angeles drug dealer tries to avoid serious conflict on his turf while a younger teen gets pulled into the same criminal world.
Paco Moreno, a few months shy of his 20th birthday, is one of the better earners for Nicaraguan distributor Henry. Taking the place of his currently incarcerated mentor, Jimmy Carrette, Paco manages a truce with a local black gang. He, for one, sells Lamar the right to deal weed near where the high schooler lives—a corner in Paco’s territory. Trouble starts, unfortunately, when Lamar racially insults Pedro, cousin to Paco’s friend and partner Julio. Paco demanding an apology (with an armed Julio present) incites Lamar, who later wants back the money he paid for the corner. Fourteen-year-old Luis Bustamante, meanwhile, needs cash to buy older sister Rosa shoes that she can’t afford. Since his brother Miguel sells marijuana for Paco, Luis works out a one-time arrangement with the dealer. But Luis gets a reputation at school as a marijuana provider, and he likes the attention, first from Jasmine and then Lilly. He starts buying the occasional joint from Paco, who takes a liking to the boy, affectionately calling him Little Tiger. Paco, however, anticipates a gang war, and Luis may get caught in the crossfire of a drive-by or possibly something much worse. Despite a plot that includes illicit deeds and murder, the story is relatively tension-free thanks to alternating first-person perspectives from Paco and Luis. The latter, for example, is a naïve teen who doesn’t seem to care that girls are using him as a dope source. There’s definitely anxiety on Paco’s side of things; even Jimmy’s impending release could prove a detriment if he refuses to support his protégé regarding the gangs’ unrest. At the same time, Paco’s self-assurance remains infectious; his only fear about a lethal double-cross is a meaningless death (“There’d be no glory in it”). The two characters are unquestionably sympathetic and deliver a strong message: they’re ultimately defined by the decisions they make, not by their environment. An uncompromising ending adds a dash of serenity.
A subdued urban narrative that neither minces words nor pulls punches.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Boston Authors Cooperative
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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