An audacious but thoroughly enthralling fantasy.
Few are the fantasies so peculiar and satisfying as this, a deliciously weird mix of alien races, Native American culture and government intrigue.
Ishpiming picks up where the first in Baker’s NeitherWorld series (Akiiwan, 2007) left off. This time around is the story of archaeologist Samantha Horner, an Ojibwe expert called in to excavate a singularly unique site in Minnesota. The site–which not incidentally piques the interest of crooked U.S. government agents–houses the body of 17th-century shaman Voice-in-the-Sky, a Native American leader who made contact with an alien race. Ten-year-old Orenda–herself a descendent of Voice-in-the-Sky–has mysteriously transported Horner and members of her dig team to a far-off world. Only here does Horner come to realize that the conflicts surrounding her excavation have taken on interstellar import. Dangers multiply, and Horner and her team learn that the nefarious designs of corrupt Washington bureaucrats are the least of their problems, for humanity is endangered by the Lupok, an alien race hell-bent on conquering Earth and enslaving all who live there. This volume is an even stranger and more ambitious work than its predecessor. Filled with strange creatures, extraterrestrial landscapes and a startling array of alien races vying for galactic ascendancy, Ishpiming taxes the imagination. But much to the author’s credit, readers will remain entranced by this strange new world. Like the best fantasy authors, Baker has a knack for fleshing out his marvelous creations, making the oddest of creatures–e.g., the eerie pink caterpillars that inhabit the NeitherWorld–as real and believable as his human characters. He has a strong faith in the power of his fiction, and that faith is strangely infectious.
An audacious but thoroughly enthralling fantasy.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4303-2788-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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