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
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.
A phone call from her past disrupts the tenuously reconstructed life of a concert pianist turned farmer’s wife.
We know from the beginning that Livia Cable is the battered survivor of her brother Cyrus’ death by suicide, a devastating romance, and a career-ending injury. Only 11 when Cyrus stepped in front of a train, she was already marked out as different in her rural Tennessee hometown by her extraordinary musical ability. The siblings had huddled together against their angry mother’s frequent beatings, and Livia still feels abandoned by Cyrus years later, when she picks up the phone to hear the voice of Sigurd, the fiery labor organizer she loved and lost to “the revolution” while on scholarship at the Indiana University School of Music. Now married to kind, steady childhood friend Charlie, Livia looks back on her affair with Sigurd as she struggles to deal with the recent death of her mother, a compulsive hoarder who left a house stuffed with junk to be disposed of and bitter memories that haven’t faded over time. Kingsolver skillfully juggles the two time frames to unravel Livia’s complicated feelings about the life she lost when her right hand was crushed and the life she has now as a country piano teacher. A partita, she explains to Sigurd early on, “is a composition made of a lot of parts with a lot of different moods…the artist’s work is to make them all add up to something that feels whole.” That’s precisely what Kingsolver does in this beautifully paced and judged narrative, which builds to revelations uncovered amid the piles of trash in Livia’s childhood home about the reasons for Cyrus’ suicide (clearly foreshadowed) and their mother’s rage (startling and heartbreaking). A fierce belief that great art is for everyone joins Kingsolver’s familiar preoccupations with class distinctions, social injustice, and the complex bonds of family and community in a tender denouement.
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9780063577541
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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