While it lacks a swift pace, this sci-fi tale offers complex, imaginative liaisons and worldbuilding.
In this sequel, a college student in a love triangle with two aliens faces a difficult decision.
The first book in Daigle’s (Alawahea, 2015) sci-fi/romance series focused on Denver college student Tamara Dorvath Carrington, 21. Her mother’s death and the arrival of exchange students from the planet Azelle triggered an “unusual, explosive Awakening” of Tamara’s “psi abilities” that exposed her secret heritage as half-Azellian through her biological mother. Another result was an unusual love triangle among Tamara and two Azellians, fellow student Alarin “Alari” Raderth and ambassador Merran Corina, a link that forces all three “to share emotions, thoughts, and physical pleasure.” An empath, Merran knows that Tamara is in love with Alari. But Merran is dedicated to his busy job, and his bond will fade if it isn’t renewed, a prospect he faces without resentment, instead focusing on negotiating a deal with the Dorbin, noncorporeal beings whose psi-active medicinal plants are desired by Azelle’s Healers. The triangle is still a worrisome issue for Tamara, who tends to fret. Just as things seem to be settling down, a big surprise unsettles her life, one that brings her, Alari, and Merran to Azelle, where readers discover more about the Temple and the experiences to be had there. Tamara learns the truth of Kyarinal, the Azellian concept that “all that was possible had indeed become possible.” Daigle weaves an intricate story that includes romance, politics, culture, and spirituality. Merran’s negotiating work is genuinely absorbing (and becomes interestingly sexual), for example, and the Azellian section is rich and intriguing, as are other glimpses readers get of that culture. A prologue recapping Book 1 would have been helpful, since there’s little to characterize Alari and it’s unclear why Tamara, who often seems immature, should be so compelling; Merran’s character is much more developed. The pace is also slowed by overused action beats (so much blinking and rubbing of eyes) and unnecessary descriptions (an intercom voice “only slightly altered by the electronic media that filtered it”).
While it lacks a swift pace, this sci-fi tale offers complex, imaginative liaisons and worldbuilding.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 349
Publisher: Merry Dissonance Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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