A time-travel adventure with well-developed characters, but more than a few (worm) holes.
The second volume of Moran’s (The Gray Ship, 2013) Time Magnet series continues the adventures of Jack Thurber, an investigative journalist who has a knack for finding time portals.
Although Thurber has traveled back in time before, he’s still surprised when he steps on a storm grate in an abandoned lot in Manhattan and is jettisoned two years into the future. He finds that the New York City of 2017 is radically different: Police officers are everywhere, and the city has the aura of a Third World dictatorship. He quickly seeks out his best friend, Benjamin “Bennie” Weinberg, a psychiatrist with the New York City Police Department, who’s shocked to see him. Apparently, Thurber is supposed to be dead—killed along with his wife and about 26,000 others when, on Thanksgiving Day, 2015, terrorists detonated five nuclear bombs hidden on five U.S. aircraft carriers. Thurber’s mission is obvious—to find out who was behind the attack, and travel back in time to stop them before they can carry them out—but it may be impossible to accomplish. Nonetheless, with time running out, Thurber and a small group of unlikely heroes set out on a mission to change history. The novel’s character development is one of its undeniable strengths. Moran does an adept job of deepening established characters, such as Thurber, while also introducing intriguing new players; Janice Monahan, the appealing wife of a weapons officer aboard one of the ships, is a particular standout. But despite its breakneck pacing and virtually nonstop action, this installment isn’t as strong as its predecessor. In part, this is due to the fact that the author uses numerous first-person sequences (from the perspective of the five terrorists), which are not only redundant, but also slow down the plot’s momentum and dilute its power. Additionally, the ending is predictable and anticlimactic.
A time-travel adventure with well-developed characters, but more than a few (worm) holes.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-0989554640
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Coddington Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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