An inspirational book about how to achieve one’s goals, wrapped in an adventure tale.
Mountain climber, investment banker and entrepreneur Fejtek, born with a condition that resulted in a partial paralysis of his right arm, writes of his quest to conquer the highest mountain on each continent.
With his wife and climbing partner, Denise, Fejtek spent eight years on a quest to reach the summit of seven of the world’s highest peaks and bring attention to athletes with physical disabilities. Starting with Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and ending with Mt. Everest on the border between Nepal and Tibet, the Fejteks overcame physical disability, brutal weather, life-threatening avalanches and illness to accomplish a feat only 65 other people at that time had achieved. Along the way, the author realized that the steps he took to prepare himself had relevance in his everyday life and business experience. Fejtek’s story is cleverly and succinctly told in 15 steps that encompass his philosophy for finding success in life and in particular as a businessman and athlete. Fejtek not only uses his steps to carry him over the finish line in Ironman competitions but also in business transactions. As he points out, steps such as “Have a Little Faith,” “Move Fast,” “Just Breathe” and “Never Give Up” can be applied to many large and small challenges. The author demonstrates most of these steps in his story of climbing Mt. Everest, an endeavor that has claimed the lives of hundreds of well-prepared climbers. The mountaintop was elusive, but the Fejteks made it to the top of the world; they also brought 23 of their friends to Everest’s base camp (at an altitude of more than 17,000 feet) in a project called Everybody to Everest. The project helped raised money for the Challenged Athletes Foundation, a group whose members were instrumental in inspiring and helping Fejtek achieve his lofty goal. (All the profits from the sales of this book will go to the CAF.)
An inspirational book about how to achieve one’s goals, wrapped in an adventure tale.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-0984012510
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Peak Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
In this intricate tale featuring an intense warrior, worldbuilding takes precedence over character development and a...
A human prince must defeat a powerful vampire warlock in this debut YA fantasy novel with sci-fi and horror elements.
Lord Taza, a vampire warlock and former emperor on planet Narlos, plans to transform all the inhabitants of planet Muiria into his vampire servants. Gifted the magical Staff of Adois by an evil goddess, Taza seems invincible—he has already transmuted many of the underground elven race of illanni—except for the “dire prophecy” of his downfall by human Prince Tarquin of Partha. After Taza’s assassin kills Tarquin’s cousin by mistake, wizard Celedant appears before the prince with an invitation to “take on a challenge worthy of your ancient Parthian blood.” Hungry for adventure, Tarquin leaves that very night to join the dwarven army at Celedant’s behest. After years of battling orcs alongside new dwarven friends, Tarquin rises through the ranks as a fierce, loyal soldier. Meanwhile, Celedant embarks on his own dangerous quest to obtain the Staff of Adaman, the only weapon that can defeat Taza’s Staff of Adois and maintain the equilibrium between good and evil. At the same time, a noble elven daughter, Morganna, foments rebellion among Taza’s illanni in the hope of joining the aboveground “children of light” Wood Elves. As his enemies amass, Taza uses the Staff of Adois to summon monsters from other dimensions. Luckily, Muiria has its own collection of magical beasts, including telepathic dragons and gods willing to interfere at opportune moments, resulting in creative battles. This ambitious novel is heavily inspired by The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones series. At its heart, the plot that Stephenson and Tedrick concoct is a simple hero’s journey, but a plethora of characters and subplots, as well as the detailed histories of multiple races—and planets—stretching back “thousands of years before the continents broke apart,” drowns the narrative. When the forces of good finally converge, battle sequences are carefully described with a few surprising twists. Yet the final chapter ends abruptly with many loose ends, suggesting further additions to this already sprawling story.
In this intricate tale featuring an intense warrior, worldbuilding takes precedence over character development and a coherent narrative.Pub Date: June 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61296-717-2
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An odd, nostalgic compilation, but a few poems about hospital patients see keenly into the condition of the individual body...
Wandzilak’s debut poetry collection spans a lifetime, musing on place, change, and mortality in light, occasional verse.
Built in the 1950s, the real-life East Deck Motel in Montauk, New York, was a mecca for beachgoers, surfers, and tourists of all stripes. But in 2015, its future was uncertain. In a sense, some of these poems, set at the motel, read as elegies—nostalgic celebrations of the seashore’s many moods. The title poem’s speaker reminisces about a night of love in the dunes, away from the crowd, and it’s gloomy with foreboding: “I could barely tell land from sea / I knew where I was, but not exactly.” With the lover’s “cold hand” in his, the speaker glimpses “the heart of a tear.” Other poems cast an eye over cultural high points, as in the longish poem “A Partial Autobiography.” The short, free-verse lines begin with oddity (“I was born with a remnant third nipple / I did not know what that meant for me”) but smooth out to more familiar touchstones: “I saw Yul Brynner play The King and I…. // I have seen the unicorns at the Cloisters //….I caught a wahoo in Turks and Caicos.” The oddity gathers and increases, however, in another cultural-event poem, this time on the occasion of seeing famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma in concert in 2013. The lilting cadence of “I ate elk with a runcible spoon!” proceeds to a playful but peculiar after-concert meal: “Later we fed Mr. Ma toasted farro / As he proceeded to eat my bone marrow!” Whimsy is one thing, but word-pairing for the sake of rhyme is another, as in this quatrain: “I have delivered fourteen lives / Each followed by fourteen placentas / Therein, I found elation upon this earth, / Unequaled to a dinner of lobster polenta.” The poet’s background as a surgeon also appears with a poetic nod to delivering bad news; in it, the narrator glances daily into a nearby cemetery, where a patient will soon be buried. A compilation of similarly medical-themed poems would be truly select.
An odd, nostalgic compilation, but a few poems about hospital patients see keenly into the condition of the individual body and soul.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5144-6727-5
Page Count: 54
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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