From an accomplished poet and second-novelist (The Soloist, 1986): a page-turning yarn about magic and time-travel set in modern Manhattan. Again, Christopher offers little poetry but lots of lean, action-packed prose. A renowned magician disappears in the middle of his act, leaving friends and family to fear that he's been trapped in another dimension by Starwood, his bitter rival. Meanwhile, Veronica, the magician's daughter and assistant, sets in motion a complex series of mystical events in order for her father to return to the here and now, using alchemy, Tibetan mysticism, Chinese philosophy, and old-fashioned magic to try to rescue him from oblivion. Enemy Starwood, however, has several tricks up his own sorcerer's sleeve and will stop at nothing to keep Veronica's father confined to history and space. Thus Veronica recruits Leo, the hapless narrator, who's accidentally stumbled into her circle of blind mystics, star-powered musicians, invisible dogs, and mind- reading, astral-projecting relatives. Leo's quickly drawn into Veronica's deadly maneuverings and soon finds himself at Sir Walter Raleigh's execution, then pursued through time by various mystical creatures. Exciting as all this is, the reader increasingly laments the absence of palpably human characters and responses: The entire time that Leo is being tricked, hoodwinked, and duped into a variety of life-threatening, multidimensional experiences, he never comments on or questions the genuinely fantastic adventures he's taking part in, and no one else, either, reacts in any way other than by whipping out a new magic potion or changeling dagger. When the battle-royal that ends atop the Empire State Building finally rolls around, there's little reason to root for any of the cosmic gladiators. High-class, Victorian-style fantasy of the fourth dimension spoiled, unfortunately, by one-dimensional characters.
Pub Date: Jan. 12, 1996
ISBN: 0-385-31471-X
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
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