An elaborate entertainment that might have benefited from a tighter presentation.
In Mendelson’s novel, a bored married couple return to the Spanish city where they honeymooned—and meet younger versions of themselves.
William Sutherland, a Scottish marketing consultant in Surrey, and his Spanish wife, Luisa, a paper conservator, celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary in 2025 by returning to the city of Seville, Spain, renewing the bond they cemented when they married three decades ago. Back then, William aspired to be a novelist, not the jaded marketer he is now, and artist Luisa felt more upbeat. Are they the same people they were when they first fell in love? The question would, ordinarily, remain hypothetical, except that this is no ordinary holiday: “William Sutherland feels like an idiot right now. Or perhaps a madman. Because standing directly in front of him…is his wife, Luisa Sutherland. Yet not as she is today. He is staring…into the perfectly entrancing face and chestnut eyes of Luisa Sutherland, circa 1995.” Somehow, the modern-day couple meets their past selves, known as Will and Lu. Before long, other aspects of space and time begin to change—a guidebook that the couple owned in 1995 is brand new when Lu holds it, but “ages and crinkles” when William does. The older man ponders whether this encounter could change the present for the better; specifically, he confronts his long-held suspicion that Luisa once had an affair. Can William alter circumstances so that Luisa never feels the temptation to stray? Nostalgia is the key theme of this deftly written fantasy story, which asks whether true love truly lasts, or whether it’s only by viewing the past through the prism of wistful reminiscence that people can convince themselves that love survives the passage of time. The writing, in the vein of a satirical Anthony Burgess novel, wittily tackles familiar elements of time-travel love stories. But at nearly 400 pages in length, the story strains to squeeze new material out of the time-warp motif; as a result, William, Luisa, Will, and Lu start to feel like houseguests who’ve overstayed their welcome.
An elaborate entertainment that might have benefited from a tighter presentation.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781835743058
Page Count: -
Publisher: The Book Guild Ltd
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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