A romantic fantasy series starter full of intriguing concepts from science and spirituality.
Tucker (Eat, Drink and Remarry, 2011) offers a fantasy about a veterinary intern who’s drawn into her deceased mother’s mystical world.
Before starting her fourth year at Cornell University, aspiring veterinary student Skylar Southmartin loses her mother, Cassie, to cancer. When she visits Massachusetts to square away Cassie’s home, she takes her father Joel’s advice and registers at the nearby Rosen College. There, she’ll intern at its equine program for the year, work on her thesis, and earn credit to graduate from Cornell. Upon arrival, Skylar is swamped by memories of competing in Rosen’s horse shows as a teenager and of her best friend, Argan, who later moved to Greece. She’s shocked to learn that Argan works on the night shift at Rosen and is now—10 years later—a handsome young man. They rekindle their friendship, which soon leads to warm, romantic feelings that feel like destiny. Later, in her mother’s library, she finds the Sanskrit Book of Akasha, which supposedly reveals one’s past and future. Her boss, Ronnie Treadwell, helps her translate small pieces of it. One night, Skylar dreams of a “stunning blond beast” of a man who radiates power and magnetism. Later, she meets Joshua Rider, an attractive and mysterious musician whose seemingly irresistible swagger just might doom her relationship with Argan. In starting a new fantasy trilogy, Tucker effectively uses her protagonist to merge the realms of science (through genetic engineer Joel’s influence) and mysticism (via Cassie’s) as Skyler finds out more about herself, her family, and the world in which she lives. Tucker’s gift for dialogue asserts itself often, as in one of several vivid, erotic scenes, when Skylar is told, “That mask you wear is all prim and appalled, but secretly...in parts you pretend don't exist, you're coming alive.” A larger theme involving the Earth’s “Divine Feminine” cycle, characterized by compassion and healing, explores such concepts as reincarnation, triple-helix DNA, and the secrets of Skylar’s lineage. Some intense, gory moments, however, aren’t for the fainthearted.
A romantic fantasy series starter full of intriguing concepts from science and spirituality.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Spark Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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