A vigorous, first-rate sequel.
Teenagers on a strange planet search for a way back to Earth while battling villainous slavers in this second installment of Gale’s (World of Dawn: Arise, 2017, etc.) YA sci-fi series.
In the previous book, set in 2017, 17-year-old Tanner; his friends Colby and Simon; and sisters, Anna and Tabby, got in a car accident and somehow found themselves on the World of Dawn. The new planet has its share of dangers, particularly giant creatures, such as horse-sized scorpions. But the group has fortunately made a few allies, such as Glooscap of the Sawnay people. He, Tanner, and all of the others are journeying to meet with the mysterious Women of the North, who may be able to help the teens get back to Earth. Then they receive a message from the Sawnay village, saying that a traitorous man named Cawop is manipulating the people into appointing him the new chief. As the group debates changing direction toward the village, they stumble upon some evil slavers attacking a band of nomads called the Denoon. Tanner and the others thwart the assault, but a slaver abducts one of Tanner’s friends and escapes, which precipitates a rescue mission. When it becomes clear that the slavers are plotting “to wipe out the Denoon,” Glooscap and the teens must decide to either move on or stay and fight. Gale’s boisterous series entry is brimming with danger; at one point, Tanner even discovers that the enigmatic One Who Sees All has put a bounty on him, personally. The teens—and readers—continue to learn more about the World of Dawn, encountering familiar mythological creatures and fellow Earthlings from past eras, including one man from the year 1070. Bloody action scenes abound, resulting in the death of a member of Tanner’s group. However, the author does occasionally offset the violence with humor; in one standout scene, for instance, Tanner faces a brutish slaver who’s listening to Michael Jackson’s 1982 song “Thriller” on an apparently stolen Sony Walkman. The novel ends with lingering questions and undeterred baddies, with an eye toward a future installment.
A vigorous, first-rate sequel.Pub Date: April 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5434-2521-5
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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