Teens with biblical interests will find this over-the-top story a fun, quirky read, but, for the irreligious among us, the...
In this coming-of-age, faith-based adventure, a handsome teenager bitterly sets out to fulfill his destiny as a half-demon warrior, protecting faithless “innocents” in a post-rapture world.
It’s never been a secret that 18-year-old Samael is half-demon. He grew faster than his peers, and he’s much stronger and faster than any human—not to mention the horns protruding from his black, shaggy hair. For these reasons, he was forced to live a life of seclusion in the home of his sensei and foster father, Hikari, and Hikari’s beautiful daughter, Aimi. Sam struggles with his identity, his love for Aimi and the truth about his mother, all while preparing for the upcoming 7-year tribulation, when demons and the devil will rule the earth. Despite an action-packed introduction, the story starts slow. A lack of anticipatory buildup leaves the reader with few demon-fighting scenes that often struggle to excite. The story picks up, however, when Sam’s character develops as his past unfolds over chapters that cleverly alternate between past and present. It’s hard not to feel for Sam and his unfortunate fate: He travels the ash-crusted, demon-filled world on his way to Los Angeles to fight the Antichrist. He manages to make a few friends along the way, though: two teenagers named Joshua and Grace accompany him on the journey, although suspicions arise as they get closer to LA. The unlikely team faces a barrage of obstacles—corrupted towns, demons and pentagrams—as well as helpful angels and a slew of biblical quotes, but with Sam’s two swords and determination, he ably leads them through hell and back.
Teens with biblical interests will find this over-the-top story a fun, quirky read, but, for the irreligious among us, the salvation undertones may be too much.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0473191610
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Pear Jam
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A bold, exhausting but highly rewarding experiment in stripping away the illusory world in search of only the most essential...
A carefully structured collection of abstract and conceptual poetry concerned with the nature of reality and relationships.
Raben’s first book-length offering may better be termed a project than a collection, and an ambitious one at that. Composed of 10 thematically distinct chapters, the volume offers a complex, nonlinear structure in which tightly entwined images, phrases and themes from each of the seemingly self-contained chapters shoot out tendrils that loop and coil themselves around the stalks of neighboring chapters. Insistently recursive and nonnarrative, the poems, taken together, read not unlike an untended villanelle gone to seed. There may not be a story, but there’s rhythm and a message. Amid it all, Raben’s voice is eminently postmodern; in addition to recursion and fragmentation, she employs highly irregular, subtle rhyme and meter, while working with short but richly syllable-dense lines. Her characters and perspectives shift frequently, exploring the same question from first-, second- and third-person, sometimes in a matter of a few lines. Time, her narrators understand, is relative—“for a moment we were the same / as we had always been / then the hours became shorter / and the second loses time”—but so too are constructed identities: “I allowed my eyes / to be painted on / chiseled and chipped / it’s harder to undo a life / made from stone.” In her most direct philosophical statements, Raben strikes a Whitmanesque chord: “We are the paint that / makes the painting / not the mind / and not the hand / we are the very stuff of life / together on the sand.” While sharing some philosophical ground with Whitman (though Raben ultimately evinces more pessimism), she evokes Alice Fulton in her abstractions and, at times, calls to mind Charles Simic’s surrealism. Occasionally, the abstractness crosses over into abstruseness, and despite the many elements of its larger structure, the collection feels incomplete. Still, Raben has a solidly crafted, enjoyable and appropriately challenging debut.
A bold, exhausting but highly rewarding experiment in stripping away the illusory world in search of only the most essential qualities of the human experience.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456851538
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An impressive novel about the subtle prejudice and blatant bigotry faced by black men and women in this country.
In Malone’s novel, an Ivy-League educated black man struggles to overcome racism in 1980s Washington, D.C.
Raised to be oblivious to race by his parents, Brandon Northcross truly believed racism was an issue of the past, defeated by the civil rights movement in the 1960s. As one of the only black students in his Dartmouth MBA program, he remains purposefully ignorant of any racism directed at him, assuming job rejections after face-to-face interviews are the result of his own deficiencies rather than thinly veiled discrimination practiced by recruiters. He is elated to land a job beneath his ability at a company with so-called progressive hiring practices. He shines in his new position and his career begins to take off despite the insinuations from his colleagues that he was only hired to fill affirmative-action quotas. Unfortunately, a hateful plan is hatched to get him fired which he, frustratingly, is too traumatized to fight. So begins Brandon’s journey to understand racism and where he fits as a black man in the business world. Though he viscerally experiences depression and hopelessness, Brandon is an inspirational character. He always manages to reeducate and rebuild himself, becoming a proud community leader. From the shut-in elderly man who collects African artifacts to the jazz musicians who introduce Brandon to Miles Davis, Malone uses secondary characters in Brandon’s journey to indirectly educate readers on black history. Some of these ancillary characters come across as very natural additions to Brandon’s life, while others feel slightly forced. The pace is at times hampered by superfluous and contrived dialogue. However, the haunting conclusion more than makes up for the plodding sections of the story.
An impressive novel about the subtle prejudice and blatant bigotry faced by black men and women in this country.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1999
ISBN: 978-0966392609
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Azure Pub
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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