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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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