Like Charlaine Harris’ Midnight, Texas saga this is cutting-edge genre fiction that will appeal to genre fans as well as...
This rousing sequel to Reynolds’ debut novel (Masters’ Mysterium: Wisconsin Dells, 2013) continues a paranormal fantasy saga chronicling the epic battle between angels and demons and the humans entangled in their war.
After what happened in Wisconsin Dells, the world now knows of the existence of angels and demons. With the ladder (the angels’ means of traveling to and from Earth) in Wisconsin Dells destroyed, the primary mission for the humans involved in the angels’ plight—like former waitress Trudy Masters and her husband, Gavin, who now has the ability to heal others with his touch—is to somehow quietly relocate an entire town to a new location: Calamity, Nevada, 30 miles outside of Sin City. But setting up a ladder in Calamity proves to be a dangerous venture, especially when a group of Vegas demons attempts to manipulate the situation to its advantage. The already volatile situation becomes even more complicated when Trudy’s father—who owns the museum of oddities known as Masters’ Mysterium—literally makes a deal with the devil. This saga is simply extraordinary on several levels. Reynolds takes the angels-vs.-demons genre—one filled with mind-numbing stereotypes and clichés—and creates a profound new mythos. His vision is unique, his characters well-developed, the pacing relentless. It’s paranormal fantasy, yes, but that shouldn’t dissuade readers disinterested in the genre. Powered by utterly readable writing and a diverse cast of characters for whom readers will undoubtedly cheer, this novel isn’t so much about angels and demons as it is about the people ensnared in the conflict and their own intimate journeys of self-discovery.
Like Charlaine Harris’ Midnight, Texas saga this is cutting-edge genre fiction that will appeal to genre fans as well as mainstream fiction readers. It’s a storytelling tour de force no matter the categorization.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0988679733
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Masters' Mysterium Press
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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