Takes its time getting started, but once the story’s finally underway, readers will need a deep breath before taking this...
In Blanchard’s debut action novel, a U.S. Naval test pilot travels to Europe and, among his father’s inheritance, uncovers evidence of a Nazi device that the Nazis still desperately want.
Lt. Cmdr. Max DuMonde learns that his father, Thomas, who Max believed was killed in action years ago in Vietnam, died just recently in 2010. Thomas left his son a wealth of items, including classic, restored aircraft, but it’s German documents that bring Nazis to Max’s door. Apparently, near the end of World War II, the Nazis had developed a machine capable of generating a “dark gate,” which reputedly could create a fourth dimension. The SS in the 21st century hopes to complete the project, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes. Blanchard’s book utilizes its historical setting to great effect; though the bulk of it takes place in 2010, it opens with Marines—led by Maj. Dean DuMonde, Max’s grandfather—battling German soldiers in 1945 and even spends some time in the Colombian jungle with Thomas in ’66, where he stumbles upon the much-desired Nazi paperwork. Blanchard reverently details the planes that Thomas restored, such as the Storch, a German WWII plane, as well as the weaponry used in action sequences. Nevertheless, scenes such as Max testing the aircraft and trekking to the French Alps to spread his father’s ashes (and where he encounters a German family, most significantly his eventual love interest, Solange) seem to put the plot on hold; it’s nearly the halfway point when Nazis finally show up, demand at least part of Max’s inheritance and kidnap Solange. But once Max and his allies, including his Navy SEAL pal Val Vittoria, track down the villains to a castle near the Swiss border, the story becomes a nonstop, exhilarating barrage of gunfights and explosions. The particulars of what the Nazi device does aren’t fully revealed until near the end, and it’s quite a surprise. Blanchard rounds out his novel by adding suspense—there’s a traitor in the States who’s helping spearhead an operation to bring Max and company back home—and a smashing ending that sets the stage for a sequel.
Takes its time getting started, but once the story’s finally underway, readers will need a deep breath before taking this exciting ride of bullet-laden action.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 316
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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