A lengthy but eventful character study that keeps its protagonist in jeopardy both on and off the battlefield.
Notchtree offers a military adventure novel about the making of a modern Russian soldier.
When readers first meet Maxym “Max” Ivanov, it’s the year 2000, he’s just 6 years old. He’s with his parents and sister when Chechen separatists brutally attack; Max hides, but the rest of his family is killed. Russian contract soldiers known as “kontraktnik” swiftly catch the perpetrators, and one of the soldiers offers young Max a gun so that he can seek immediate justice. Max does so, shooting all the captives and vowing to one day kill all the mujahedeen. One of the Russian soldiers, Leonid Nikolayevich, adopts the youngster and vows to take care of him. After Leonid is wounded in battle, he and Max move to the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod. Aside from the fact that Max has killed several people and seems driven to kill more, he and Leonid live a fairly ordinary life. When the young man reaches puberty, he realizes that he’s gay; he later carries on a secret relationship with a boy named Andrei. When the two are caught having sex, it creates a scandal, and they are forced to sever all ties with each other. At the age of 17, Max joins a fighting force called Valhalla, and he proves to be highly skilled with firearms. In Valhalla, recruits live by such maxims as “your whole body is a killing machine.” Max goes on to participate in missions throughout the world; eventually, in 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine occurs, and he reflects on how he really doesn’t want “to join this Donbas mess and end up shooting at Ukrainians.”
The entire saga of Maxym Ivanov weighs in at more than 700 pages, and it’s a tale that progresses at an unhurried pace with a great deal of dialogue. For instance, when Max is young, he has an awful lot of questions; when he and Leonid are taking a trip to England, for instance, the youngster asks, “Can we meet the Queen?” Many of his queries, though, don’t add much to his character or to the overall progress of the story. Even in Max’s later years, he still has obvious queries, as when he says, in response to a comment about bank interest rates going up: “That means I get more in interest, doesn’t it?” Still, for readers, the heart of the matter is where this ferocious combatant will ultimately end up. The narrative builds excitement as he arrives in such locales as Northern Ireland and the Central African Republic. There’s plenty of action, as well: “A hail of bullets came his way, smashing into the masonry around.” One never knows what the next hot zone will have in store—or if his sexual orientation will attract dangerous attention. For example, he worries about what the Russian army, who threaten to conscript Max if he doesn’t volunteer for combat, will do if they find out that he’s gay. Such moments of tension give the story added suspense and momentum.
A lengthy but eventful character study that keeps its protagonist in jeopardy both on and off the battlefield.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2024
ISBN: 9798389763173
Page Count: 534
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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