An ambitious thriller that will excite and inspire readers to seek out forthcoming books in the series.
In Bottari’s debut dystopian thriller set in the near future, the American government initiates a directive to take total control of the country.
U.S. Army Col. Nick Fizer is ready to enjoy a little rest and relaxation with his wife, Stephy, at his parents’ West Virginia farm. However, he’s understandably concerned when he learns that the government’s been trying to seize the property. It turns out that taking ownership of private land is just one goal of the Olympus Project Strategic Execution and Implementation Manifesto Directive, a classified government document signed back in 1901. Nick is one of the few people who’s read it, and he knows that Phase I of the Olympus Project has likely begun. He’s likewise aware that Phase II, which entails military mobilization, is all set to go, with United Nations peacekeeping forces stationed in secret underground compounds. As a precaution, Nick and his family head to Alaska, which he believes may be a safe haven from the implementation of martial law. Bottari’s novel is epic in scale, focusing on numerous characters around the United States, including a widow named Miriam and her two young kids in Alaska; a recently promoted Army colonel, Falcon Colby, on his first assignment with the Department of Defense’s Regional Operations Command; and Russian soldier Malikov, who’s serving with the U.N. peacekeeping forces when he’s arrested for killing an American officer. The stories are each distinctive, but they all relate to the overarching plot of the OPSEIM Directive. Miriam and her children, for instance, brave a freak August blizzard that may be the result of the government manipulating the weather. The book, the first in a planned series, sometimes feels more like a lengthy introduction; for example, several characters spend pages speculating about what’s to come in lieu of any of it actually happening, and much of the story, including the officer’s murder, remains unresolved. But Bottari does know how to effectively tease readers, as she merely hints at the details of the directive, leaving Phase III a pure mystery. The author’s prose, too, is playful and intoxicating, such as her description of a blistering storm: “the deep biting cold that stiffened his brittle bones, and the snow that stung his flesh.”
An ambitious thriller that will excite and inspire readers to seek out forthcoming books in the series.Pub Date: April 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-0990317500
Page Count: 530
Publisher: Wolf Rock Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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