The ending’s too nice for the guts-and-gore theme of the rest of the book, but the author ties up most loose threads and...
A midwife in the palace of Sultan Murat III helps a poor Jewish harem girl in Rich’s follow-up to The Midwife of Venice (2012).
In 16th-century Constantinople, Venetian exiles Hannah and Isaac Levi traverse the sometimes-treacherous streets and work to sustain themselves and their son. Isaac’s opened a silk workshop, and Hannah continues to ply her trade as a midwife. When she’s summoned to the palace by the sultan’s formidable mother, the Valide Nurbanu, Hannah’s tasked with examining a young girl whom the Valide wishes to present to her son as a gift. The Valide hopes newly acquired Leah will produce a strong heir and entice the sultan to forget his favorite wife, Safiye. After her village was pillaged and razed by marauders, feisty Leah, a Venetian Jew like Hannah, was taken captive and eventually sold into servitude. Hannah pities the girl and lies to the Valide to prevent Leah from being sent to a brothel. Hannah knows by doing so she’s risking her life, but she comes up with a risky ruse to conceal the lie. Back in Venice, when Isaac’s brother dies, a household maid assumes his widow Grazia’s identity and sails to Constantinople to carry out an elaborate scheme. With encouragement from a fellow conspirator, she refines the plot and, upon arriving in Constantinople, is welcomed and offered shelter by Hannah and Isaac. As Hannah again risks her family and friends to assist Leah, she develops reservations about her sister-in-law and worries about her marriage, her husband’s business and her status with the Valide. She’s prepared to die for her actions, but she doesn’t anticipate events that threaten the family's stability and result in an unexpected ally. Rich embellishes her tale with graphic descriptions of life and death in Venetia and Constantinople during this era, and although her depictions are sometimes unpleasant to imagine, they add to the intrigue.
The ending’s too nice for the guts-and-gore theme of the rest of the book, but the author ties up most loose threads and delivers an enthusiastic effort. This earthy account will please Rich fans.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1280-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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