Not lacking in imagination but short on fleshed-out characters to connect with as the increasingly convoluted story develops.
In Humphries’ dizzying debut, which blends sci-fi, crime drama, martial arts and more, a secret government project goes haywire, poking holes in the space-time continuum and setting into motion a series of events that reverberate across centuries.
In 2049, a brick-shaped piece of technology goes missing from a lunar satellite, falling through a portal caused by dimensional damage at the hands of a governmental unit of quantum scientists. The so-called brick lands in seventh-century Korea, where Sainen Chinhung, a vicious assassin from the era, steals the Four Dragons Sword, which seems to have the ability to interact with strange, midair “shimmerings” that, when people step through them, apparently allow for time travel. Sainen steps through one such portal and emerges in Victorian London, where his first act of murder ends up being credited to Jack the Ripper. From there, he traverses through historical settings, attaining power for himself as a crime lord. Meanwhile, a female warrior from the seventh century, Kyung-Soon, who at first pledges to regain the sword, eventually ends up working with Sainen in order to amass power and wealth for herself. Humphries’ novel is extremely ambitious, awesome in scope and meticulously researched. Each time the novel arrives in a new era, Humphries vividly brings it to life, a particularly impressive feat given the book’s deliberately fragmented style. Comprised mostly of very short chapters, the narrative at times jumps between multiple characters and stories. While weaving throughout time may be impressive on a technical level, it comes at the expense of characterization and the ability to follow the narrative. There’s rarely more than a passing glance at any of the characters, and even readers well-versed in time-travel stories might find themselves scratching their heads at the plot’s confusing structure. A number of surprisingly graphic, gory sequences in the book’s latter half might turn readers off, too.
Not lacking in imagination but short on fleshed-out characters to connect with as the increasingly convoluted story develops.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615844763
Page Count: 390
Publisher: Lucky Buzzard LLC
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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