An appealing Afrocentric time-travel tale, hampered by a sluggish pace.
A California college student uses ancient African magic to travel through time in this fantasy debut.
Chloe Marshall—administrative assistant to a senator and a freshman at Cal State in Los Angeles—has always experienced preternatural occurrences. Sometimes the song on the radio will reflect the exact thought she’s having. Sometimes this happens three times in a row. She’s never told her conservative Christian mother about this of course. Her mother just wants Chloe to get a degree so she can get a good-paying job. She gives Chloe grief just for taking an African- American studies class. Something in the class sends Chloe’s mysterious powers into overdrive. When researching a project on Adam Clayton Powell Jr., she is momentarily swept back into the pastor’s Harlem. Later, in a Candomblé ritual with one of her classmates, she is told by a spirit, “Look for Oya, Exu and Ayodele.” Meanwhile, across the gulf of time, Ayodele of Igbogila is captured by enemy Dahomey tribesmen and sold into slavery to their white allies. Both Chloe and Ayodele will have to find faith in the religion of the Orisha—the gods of Africa—in order to overcome the troubles in their own eras and to reunite in what proves to be a family reunion across time. Johnson writes in a punchy, conversational prose that hews close to the voices of her characters: “None of her advisors had a clue about what was going on inside her. Everyone wanted to play it safe. Whatever happened to the ‘Give me liberty or give me death’ mentality?” The use of shifting perspectives, multiple timelines, and African-American spiritualism lends the book a distinctive charm, though the plot takes a while to truly get moving. Johnson follows secondary characters down narrative cul-de-sacs that distract from the larger story, and readers must reach 100 pages before anything truly fantastic happens. Though some of the dialogue borders on the didactic, readers looking for a mix of western African mysticism and speculative fiction should enjoy this work, the first installment of a series.
An appealing Afrocentric time-travel tale, hampered by a sluggish pace.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-364-64267-9
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Blurb
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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