Widower Joshua Pinson and his two children come to live on a rural Florida homestead, bequest of his eccentric uncle Elijah. The property is dominated by a huge live oak tree, beneath whose branches Elijah built a solar-powered house. Unsettlingly, Elijah met his end in a bizarre accident with a chain saw—and the locals tell Joshua that the place is haunted. Sure enough, the fatal chain saw exudes an aura of menace, and soon Joshua experiences various apparitions: a ghost train; the screams of a girl who was raped beneath the tree (she, however, is still alive !); a ghostly rifle shot (a hunter committed suicide beneath the tree); the ghost of Elijah's mistress (but she's still alive too). Undaunted, Joshua refurbishes the house and engages a housekeeper; but the latter, inexplicably threatened by the Pinsons' normally placid dogs, soon quits. An elderly neighbor dies nearby, apparently of fright. The housekeeper is replaced by the nubile Brenna, who loves kids and likes her chances of marrying Joshua. Then Brenna sees the ghosts too: one of the kids is attacked by phantom bloodsucking bugs; Elijah's pony, tethered outside, goes berserk and tries to break into the house; one of the dogs attacks a steer and gets thoroughly stomped; a vile stench and a hot, looming presence leads Joshua to suspect the depredations of a Skunk Ape, Florida's equivalent of Bigfoot. Belatedly, Joshua realizes that the tree is the source of all the weird goings-on. But the promised showdown never happens; instead, the story subsides into a footling conclusion involving telepathy and an unsuspected sinkhole. Serviceable ideas, then, and a solid plot moved briskly along in Anthony's fluent, not to say facile, style—and spiced by some genuinely frightening moments. A persuasive performance—the limp wrap-up notwithstanding—that should swell the ranks of Anthony's already huge audience.
Pub Date: April 7, 1986
ISBN: 0812531035
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1986
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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