Engaging action on both land and sea with well-drawn characters.
This third volume of a mid-19th-century family saga, set on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Maryland, focuses on a vital addition to a private fleet.
It is 1843, and Benjamin and Sonja Pulaski have won the salvage rights to the schooner Raven, a former slave ship. They have settled in a rented house in Lapidum, facing the canal that runs along the river, just south of the Mason-Dixon Line, separating slave-state Maryland from free-state Pennsylvania. The Raven is a substantial addition to Ben’s fleet of three barges, and the vessel will prove to be a dangerous turning point in the couple’s lives. When the new manager of a bank, at the direction of the villainous Lydia Binterfield, issues the Pulaskis an eviction order, they are forced to move to the nearby town of Havre de Grace. They take up temporary residence in “the Pink House,” run by the irrepressible widow Mamie Stewart. Now that he is the owner of an ocean-worthy ship, Ben can expand his cargo service, leaving the barges for coal runs along the canals and the Chesapeake while he and Sonja use the Raven to convey sugar, rum, and mercantile items to and from the Carolinas. They can also transport rescued slaves and kidnapped blacks to the North. Ben, who had previously hidden a few runaway slaves in his barges, now enters a complicated and treacherous business. Lackey’s (Blood on the Chesapeake, 2016, etc.) series successfully combines nautical adventures with multiple personal dramas while sharply examining the blight of slavery. The novel’s depiction of the increasing hostilities between slave owners and abolitionists serves as a graphic harbinger of the Civil War, still almost two decades away. In contrast to the more violent aspects of the tale is the tender rebuilding of the relationship between Ben and Sonja, each still haunted by traumatic experiences from the earlier volumes. Lackey’s attention to historical details—the process of moving the barges through the canal locks, and the specifics of meals and clothing—deftly brings the era to life. And a few real plot surprises keep the narrative lively.
Engaging action on both land and sea with well-drawn characters.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-83132-8
Page Count: 390
Publisher: Heron Oaks
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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