A high-voltage, entertaining roller-coaster ride that could have been more dazzling if it had kept its raison d’être front...
A young college student battles corporate nasties in his bid to rid the world of carbon-based emissions in Nawaz’s spirited debut thriller.
Alex Watson doesn’t just want to be yet another millstone around the neck of humanity; he wants to make a difference. Such wide-eyed idealism isn’t easy to indulge in his provincial town of Asheville, North Carolina—or so he thinks. One day, while flying his hobby plane over the Blue Ridge Mountains, Alex notices a glint on a mountainside that turns out to be a mysterious geode. After Alex brings it home, he discovers that it has the power, quite literally, to light up his whole neighborhood for the foreseeable future. The young idealist could take care of his make-a-difference agenda with this pet rock, which he calls “Bloo” or “Energy X.” Now that he has a definite plan to save the world, he recruits the help of his closest friend, James Campbell, an intern at G-Tek, to get him an audience with the global renewable energy firm. After the top guns at G-Tek make appropriate cooing noises, they do an about-face and assign their nastiest guys to decimate Bloo (and its owner, while they’re at it). Why does a renewables company want to destroy an alternative energy source? Will Alex be able to save the world after teaming up with the green energy company Occupy the World? And what do Zimbabwe’s natural resources have to do with Alex’s end goals? Nawaz’s wild adventure is action-packed and breathlessly paced as Alex and his friends engage in a David-and-Goliath battle. However, the novel doesn’t sufficiently explore its main premise of an otherworldly green-energy source, and questions linger about what exactly will happen when the limited geode runs out. A story that centers on an energy solution could have had a more unique plot than the run-and-chase, good-guys–versus–bad-guys model here. Also, Alex’s decision to mine more of the Energy X geode in Zimbabwe seems questionable given that country’s blood-diamond history and Alex’s squeaky-clean morals.
A high-voltage, entertaining roller-coaster ride that could have been more dazzling if it had kept its raison d’être front and center.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9856377-1-2
Page Count: 328
Publisher: New World Order Publications
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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