An uneven but wonder-filled middle chapter in a cosmic-epic series.
Following a fatal assault on their solar system by an advanced race, a human-alien alliance chases the marauders across the cosmos in a giant ship cloned from the attacker’s technology.
Nobody can accuse Williamson (Countdown Armageddon, 2016, etc.) of thinking small midway through a four-part saga. In previous volumes (absolutely required to keep up), human natives of the planet Amular no sooner form a beneficial relationship with bloblike, advanced aliens they named the Loud when both species face extinction via mysterious, ancient hostiles that the Loud (who know more than they’re telling) call Spiral Slayers. Technologically superior beyond comprehension, the shadowy race sends giant “Blackships” to pilot and position black holes to destroy entire worlds and star systems. In the previous installment, humans and Loud barely survived the devastation of an attack on Amular by damaging a Blackship. Here, using debris from the (organic) doomsday device, they successfully clone their own huge “Whiteship,” which serves as a ship/colony as well as the ultimate weapon, to chase and confront the tool of the Spiral Slayers. But, across the vastness of space, it takes millennia, with humans necessarily in suspended animation at intervals. Williamson’s narrative leapfrogs through time, discarding the measured pace of earlier books for one in which centuries pass in a sentence, and a paragraph summarizes sensational superscience that might have engaged another writer for a full novel. In a near Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy development, bees in the Whiteship’s vast indoor park evolve en route into a new sentient species whose intellect and engineering overtakes Homo sapiens; they’re a deux ex machina (buzz ex machina?) in a hornet’s nest of revelations at the end. There is technology sufficiently advanced that it appears godlike and sci-fi storytelling magnified to the dimensions of myth—the title may signify that Williamson is mining the Homeric rather than the Arthur C. Clark–ian—with only broad strokes for characterizations and some of the archetypal underpinnings starting to show (the human hero is named Adamarus, the heroine Evelyn, hmm...). A peep inside a Blackship dispels some awe—imagine The Dark Crystal, only ickier. But a breathless to-be-continued finale should have readers hooked despite the inconsistencies.
An uneven but wonder-filled middle chapter in a cosmic-epic series.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-79269-588-9
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2019
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
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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