by Steve Burch ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A wildly creative thriller that attempts to cram too many threads into an already packed and harrowing storyline.
A time-traveling novel centers on turmoil in the near future.
It is the year 2025, and exactly 140 meteoroids are headed toward Earth. Life, as humans know it, may very well cease to exist by the winter solstice. Added to the trouble is the fact that the solstice will involve a celestial alignment “considered to presage an apocalyptic event.” Pope John Paul III, a frail though amiable pontiff, encourages the world to pray, though it seems that more drastic action may be necessary. Meanwhile, a strange blackthorn tree has sprouted from the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. It is a sight that mystifies people and enrages a blood-drinking cardinal who, along with his equally sinister dwarf sidekick, Brother Alaimo, teams up with a mysterious woman named Lebhudha (aka “the Dragon Queen”) to engage in money laundering and prevent a resurgence of the Roman Catholic Church in China. The only hope seems to come from a grumpy German archbishop named Regenmacher and his Irish assistant as they seek to find lost religious artifacts that just might save the world. Events in 2025 are, however, merely the tip of the iceberg in this raucous adventure that spans time periods, encompassing the days of Eden, Gilgamesh, and Noah. Readers who at the outset think a quick resolution may be around the corner concerning those 140 meteoroids will instead find themselves redirected through detours that include a curse of Cain, questionable ethics among Vatican relations with mobsters, and a brief suggestion that Pope John Paul I was murdered. Burch’s (Romancing Boudica, 2014, etc.) ambitious tale is a starkly imaginative mix with a colorful, wide-ranging cast. But it is easy to get lost in the fray. With so many locations, topics, and conflicts, narrowing it all down to a single, discernible narrative is not a simple task. Dialogue is often obvious, as when a female pope asserts: “I’ll do my best to create an education system so women can participate in our religious community.” This type of statement gives some inventive portions a blunt quality that will likely fail to dazzle the audience.
A wildly creative thriller that attempts to cram too many threads into an already packed and harrowing storyline.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 686
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Robinne Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 13, 2017
A fascinating, thought-provoking, genre-bending romantic read.
When Solène Marchand takes her 12-year-old daughter to a concert by the hottest boy band on the planet, she doesn't expect to fall in love with one of the singers.
Middle-aged art gallery owner Solène hasn’t dated since her divorce, but when her ex-husband buys their daughter and a group of her friends tickets to Vegas and a backstage concert experience, then backs out at the last minute, she steps in as escort. The five guys in the wildly popular English boy band August Moon appeal to women of all ages, but Hayes, the brains behind the group’s success, flirts with Solène at the concert meet and greet, invites them to a party after the show, then pursues her once she gets back to Los Angeles. He’s only 20 and he’s incredibly famous; his attention is flattering and heady. The two fall into an affair that’s supposed to be light and easy, but before long they can’t ignore their intense emotional attachment. Solène is hesitant to tell her daughter, but when she procrastinates, Isabelle learns about it through an online tabloid, which damages their relationship and leaves Solène open to censure from her ex. Then, once the affair goes viral, she experiences the darker side of Hayes’ fan base. What started out as a jaunty adventure turns into an emotionally fraught journey, and Solène must decide what she’s willing to risk for her happiness and what she won’t risk for her daughter’s. Actress Lee, who appeared in Fifty Shades Darker, debuts with a beautifully written novel that explores sex, love, romance, and fantasy in moving, insightful ways while also examining a woman’s struggle with aging and sexism, with a nod at the tension between celebrity and privacy.
A fascinating, thought-provoking, genre-bending romantic read.Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-12590-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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