Inventive and compulsively readable sci-fi.
A parallel dimension holds the secret to an audacious project that allows people from the past to live in the present.
In the middle of the desert, Sam Ahearn of Ahearn Industries enters a nondescript warehouse to check out a portal there. Known as the Hole, it is the entry to another dimension. Sam enters the portal with his head of security, Oscar Larsen. A simple evaluation soon goes wrong when the portal door never reopens. In Bainbridge, New Hampshire, Carrie Heath awaits the arrival of distant relatives John and Sally Dearborn and their daughter, Meg. The Dearborns are no ordinary family; they lived and died in the 1800s and were brought back to life by Ahearn Industries thanks to an organism found within the alternate dimension. The Dearborns and others like them are called retreads (which of course refers to secondhand tires that receive new treads). While the Dearborns adjust to their new lives in contemporary society, Sam and Oscar struggle to stay alive within the Hole. When they meet Micajer “Cager” Barclay, a young man with a connection to Meg, they discover there may be another portal out of the Hole. But the key to their escape may rest with Meg. The latest from Hobbs (New Hope, 2014, etc.) is an irresistible sci-fi yarn with a provocative premise, strong characters, and fast-paced action. The concepts developed throughout the novel allow the author to explore questions of identity and the ethics of Ahearn’s enterprise. The chapters alternate between Sam’s and Oscar’s travails in the Hole and the Dearborn family’s encounters in Bainbridge, with excerpts from Margaret Dearborn’s diary serving as a bridge to connect the narratives. The structure is effective and offers a glimpse into the experiences of retreads from multiple perspectives. Hobbs introduces a large number of characters over the course of the tale and all are well-developed, especially Margaret, who decides to change her first name to Meg to reflect her new life as a retread. The action sequences within the Hole are gripping as Sam and Oscar confront a mysterious and dangerous world.
Inventive and compulsively readable sci-fi.Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9993177-0-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Hatchet Mountain Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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