An imaginative, if uneven, tale of carnage, angels and the hereafter.
Pike delivers a debut fantasy novel about a war in the afterlife.
Jericho is no stranger to life’s bleaker aspects, from his current job managing a graveyard to his former high-stress career as a surgeon. But when his daughter’s illness takes a turn for the worse, it drives him to suicide. It’s a decision that has lingering effects on the living—particularly Jericho’s ex-wife—but also on the world of the dead. The afterlife, it turns out, isn’t as straightforward as it used to be; a war between heaven and hell has left many lost souls eking out an existence in a shadowy netherworld. The devil’s hunter, Bathsheba, is bent on collecting souls to bring to hell—and she keeps her victims’ beating hearts in a small pouch. The sword-wielding angel Judas is one of the few figures who can stop her; he appears in the afterlife as a force for good and does all he can to protect innocent souls. Other afterlife figures take an interest in Jericho as the conflict ensues, including an unforgiving Archangel Michael and a Beethoven-loving Satan. Pike’s novel is sometimes gruesome (“At The Prince’s nod she sawed the blade back and forth across her tortured flesh until the shriveled pink tip of her breast was fully cut away and lying on the floor in a pool of her own sizzling blood”), but it does a fine job putting a new spin on familiar afterlife figures. The devil seems to appreciate human achievements, for example, and most of the angels don’t. However, the main character, Jericho, often gets lost in the narrative. Despite the fact that his personal life is marked by tragedy, readers may not find him very relatable, even after they learn that he loves to draw and that he cares for his daughter. In the end, it’s not quite enough to make his character truly memorable.
An imaginative, if uneven, tale of carnage, angels and the hereafter.Pub Date: July 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615745923
Page Count: 616
Publisher: 676 Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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