Fresh intelligence, danger, and complexity await sci-fi fans.
This third volume of a space station series reinvigorates a familiar villain and introduces new allies.
The medical space station Nelson Mandela serves the Union of Solar Systems by repairing and upgrading soldiers who have animal adaptations. After once again halting the deranged plans of Dr. Jeffrey Nestor, Dr. Grace Lord and the handsome, devoted android Bud no doubt deserve room to develop their friendship. Grace’s boss, the indefatigable Dr. Hiro Al-Fadi, believes otherwise and demands that she not encourage Bud’s romantic leanings. Elsewhere on the station, the sentient Plant Thing that’s merged with Dr. Eric Glasgow begins experimenting on its own by creating Little Bud, a humanoid plant capable of walking the corridors and shocking Nelson Mandela’s already colorful denizens. Dr. Mikhail Lewandowski, meanwhile, needs to examine Hiro’s mind for any lingering posthypnotic suggestions of violence from Nestor, creator of mind-link therapy. A more direct threat is the ship Inferno, captained by the suspiciously monikered Danté Alighieri, who wants to dock with the station and bring aboard six crew members suffering from a mysterious virus. And if Grace’s life wasn’t complicated enough, she stumbles across an injured man in stasis named Alexander Grayson Lord. Will she be able to focus on saving lives when an explosion strikes the Nelson Mandela? Sasaki’s (Bud by the Grace of God, 2016, etc.) third installment of the Grace Lord series, with its large and varied cast, hits many of the high notes from the previous volumes. But this time, a series of vicious murders overshadows the scientific aspects of the narrative, creating more of a thriller atmosphere. Plant Thing proves an indelible character through whom the author explores how something or someone’s appearance skews perceptions of the entity’s essential being. The relationship between two tiger-adapted Marines, Capt. Damien Lamont and Cpl. Delia Chase, is bittersweet and grounded by dramatic war visuals (“Black shrapnel and ash were raining down, a dark contrast to the brilliant electric streaks of deadly laser fire”). Though Sasaki revisits numerous motifs, she pumps such joy and energy into her world that it’s impossible to fly past without visiting.
Fresh intelligence, danger, and complexity await sci-fi fans.Pub Date: March 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9947905-5-2
Page Count: 511
Publisher: Oddoc Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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