Trippy bit of indulgent storytelling, readable in short bursts.
A scientist enters another dimension through a giant seashell and meets a cast of historical characters.
Marine biologist Philip Grieg had a magical, if unsettling, experience as a child. Growing up on the beaches of Padre Island, Texas, he was accustomed to strange artifacts washed ashore by the Gulf of Mexico. But none matched the wondrousness of a ten-foot-high shell, one so large that the young Philip could walk inside. There, he heard an eerie voice that would haunt him into adulthood. Twenty-five years later, Philip is a prominent scientist, with the specter of the seashell still lingering over him. He looks up a friend, professor Moebius at Harvard, and asks for help in resolving the mystery of the otherwordly shell. The professor has a secret weapon at his disposal: His great-grandfather was Dr. August Moebius, who discovered the Moebius strip, a geometrical and physical oddity with two edges but only one surface. It is said that traveling along the strip is akin to traveling between dimensions. Thus, Philip and Moebius, with the help of the beautiful M.D. Elaine Rogers, work to lay a track of Moebius strip down inside the spiraling, symmetrical shell, aiming to gain access to the supernatural properties it possesses. Using vehicles to speed around the strip, they soon confirm their suspicions and enter another dimension, one that exists between the living and dead. The space is populated by noteworthy historical characters, all dead or presumed missing. The protagonists meet John Dillinger, Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Hoffa, Glenn Miller and George Leigh Mallory, among others. There, the plot unravels and forward motion ceases, literally and figuratively, as each of the notorious figures tells their story, and Philip looks for a common thread. The stories become episodic and unlinked, causing the narrative to suffer. The mishmash of history and pseudoscience don’t do the story any favors; while interesting, readers may doubt its accuracy. There is too heavy a reliance on historical information throughout, and not enough focus on realistic dialogue or narrative development. Literary audiences, however, will enjoy Lewis’ tribute to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and how he ties it into the plot.
Trippy bit of indulgent storytelling, readable in short bursts.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-7414-3797-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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
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