An entertaining, if somewhat overwhelming, adventure tale.
A swashbuckling adventure novel, the first in a planned trilogy, that tells the story of modern-day pirate Bobby McAllister.
Novelist Granger Lawton suffers from a lack of material for his second book. His publisher insists that he leave the comforts of his Arizona ranch to interview a 20th-century pirate and Southern gentleman named Bobby McAllister, in order to write a book based on McAllister’s life. Lawton feels that he doesn’t have a choice but to go and hear what the man has to say, but he finds McAllister’s tall tales of adventure and treasure hunting in the Caribbean difficult to believe. McAllister tells him a story of how, after fleeing law enforcement officials in Georgia, he became mixed up with an eclectic group of treasure hunters looking to find and recover the Hacha, a 17th-century Spanish ship. His path to eventual success included sexy, mysterious women; crooked, vengeful cops; a talking parrot; and, unfortunately, the deaths of close friends. He then tells Lawton that his life’s true calling has been to find a different, more elusive treasure, and he enlists the reluctant writer in his quest to find a legendary ship known as the Prize. The novel jumps back and forth in time quite a bit, and, as a result, the plot grows somewhat confusing, and it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of all of the colorful characters. Readers probably won’t mind terribly much, however, as they’re likely to get swept up by the charismatic McAllister’s enthusiasm. Debut author Ferguson based McAllister’s story on his own life experiences salvaging treasure from sunken ships, and he blended fact with fiction and fantasy to create a posthumously published trilogy. As readers try to guess what’s true and what’s invented, they’re likely to find the novel enjoyable on a whole other level.
An entertaining, if somewhat overwhelming, adventure tale.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2010
ISBN: 978-1770671485
Page Count: 480
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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