This unholy anthology can’t quite break free of its tropes, but it’s certainly something to look at.
A ghoulish collection of short sci-fi, fantasy, and horror stories that explore strange and haunting possibilities.
In this macabre collection, each story borrows from and blends genre fiction, fairy tales, and historical events, as in “The Alamo Incident,” which re-creates the Alamo Mission as a casualty of eldritch beings roaming the American countryside. Most of the plots adapt a common trope (the boy who cried wolf during the Black Death, zombies who are stunned by Shakespeare, an alien invasion at a forced conversion therapy center) and tie it off with the requisite calculated twist. To fulfill that pattern, many of the protagonists display an unerring ability to commit murder or be murdered at the last minute. Sometimes, Eads’ (Lord Byron’s Prophecy, 2015, etc.) premise both carries the plot and allows for particularly apt descriptions to shine. Of those moments, “And the Raindrops—Its Tears” stands out. It follows a sinner in a dystopian civilization where none may look at the sky for fear of going insane upon sight of a sky demon. In other stories, the genres pile up into a terrifying heap. The most emblematic is certainly “Riveter,” in which Eva Braun falls in love with a poster of Rosie the Riveter and tries to bring her to life through some classic unethical sci-fi experiments in the Third Reich. For the stories where Eads sticks to character development and description, his writing sets a pleasing rhythm. But when he tries for metaphorical flourishes, they tend to be too on-the-nose: In “The Dreamist,” dream-projection technology has made skilled dreamers famous, and the narration can’t help itself but repeatedly point out that the story’s surreality makes it feel “like a dream.”
This unholy anthology can’t quite break free of its tropes, but it’s certainly something to look at.Pub Date: June 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59021-656-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Lethe Press
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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