by Rebecca Anne Nguyen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 13, 2024
Fans of time-travel romance are likely to find this story deeply satisfying.
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Nguyen’s debut novel follows a woman as she goes back to 16th-century France to try to avert ecological destruction in the future.
Initially set in near-future Vancouver, British Columbia, the story revolves around 29-year-old Sloane Burrows, whose life has been largely unhappy and unfulfilling. Her beloved mother died in childbirth, and her emotionally closed-off and manipulative father seemingly disapproved of everything she did; she also feels like an indentured servant to her father because of her unpaid student loan debt, and she just got fired from her job. Complicating matters further is what her father calls her “freak memory”—her ability to recall every life experience with crystal clarity. Sloane’s dream was to become a “Hero”—a courageous person picked for the prestigious “Program” to travel back in time on specific missions aimed at saving the planet from environmental collapse; for example, one Hero prevented the discovery of DDT. When Sloane applies to the Program, she’s chosen as the next time-traveler, but before she embarks on her mission—which will take her to 1521 to attempt to thwart the first French expedition to the Americas—she falls in love with the mysterious man who started the Program, who’s also inexplicably been in her dreams for years. The consistently high emotional intensity throughout Nguyen’s novel is the fuel that powers its narrative engine, as is the complex dynamism between the two lead characters. The passion is incendiary in places: “She wanted to touch him, taste him, worship him—but her body responded to his swift, assured movements like a flower unfolding to the sun; it yielded to him, softening, opening, blossoming beneath his touch, and she was powerless to resist.” The backstory involving the discovery and use of time travel is muddled and an inarguable weakness. However, the love-conquers-all ending and not-so-subtle environmental stewardship themes in this Outlander-esque adventure more than make up for it.
Fans of time-travel romance are likely to find this story deeply satisfying.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9798989593415
Page Count: 404
Publisher: Castle Bridge Media
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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by Max Brooks
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Margaret Atwood ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2019
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
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New York Times Bestseller
Booker Prize Winner
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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edited by Margaret Atwood & Douglas Preston
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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