A familiar plot takes a winding, ultimately rewarding path.
Springer (Zachary, 2017, etc.) presents book two in his sci-fi series about genetically enhanced teenagers.
Zachary sleeps little, ages quickly, and uses a wheelchair while living in a facility that trains children to be soldiers. Although Zachary would love to play baseball like a nondisabled kid, his fate is intertwined with those of the others in the facility he calls home, which doesn’t include any time on the field. The children may get treated to occasional movie night screenings of Avatar or Caddyshack, but their focus is on military tactics and the development of supernatural powers. The children learn from adults called Ascendants who help them develop gifts that range from telepathy to the ability to change the molecular structure of an object. This training culminates in a contest that pits two teams of children against each other. It will require quick thinking as well as the use of the powers the children have been working so hard to harness. One team is led by Zachary, who by that point no longer uses his wheelchair, while the other is led by his rival, a sinister youngster named Victor. Will Zachary and his team learn to harness their burgeoning abilities and work together? The idea of gifted youngsters joining forces may be a well-trod path, but the novel incorporates many nuanced issues (sometimes ham-handedly: Zachary uses a wheelchair, but he only realizes his goals upon leaving it). The Ascendants have their own special powers, but they are far from content with their situation. While the dialogue isn’t always inspired (“Teamwork will be the key to winning”), a substantive plot keeps the pages turning. Whether or not Zachary and his team win the competition (and whether or not teamwork is the key to that victory) takes a back seat to the uncanny, imaginative details of the world in which such a competition exists. Who exactly is this emperor everyone is serving and what are his plans? Such questions keep the story thrumming until the very end.
A familiar plot takes a winding, ultimately rewarding path.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68433-017-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.
Pub Date: June 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14059-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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