by Steve Shear ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 24, 2018
Though it treads familiar terrain, this action-laden futuristic tale offers a captivating world and protagonist.
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In the 23rd century, a former CIA operative looks for a way to save his terminally ill grandson in this sci-fi novel.
Oliver Hitchcock, a 78-year-old retired CIA agent, is a Beater. This means he’s beaten the Click, an audible, supposedly God-willed indication that a person will soon die. There are unfortunately Preemies as well, children who prematurely hear the Click, such as Hitch’s dead 11-year-old grandson, Oliver Jr. When OJ’s younger brother, Christopher, is apparently near death, Hitch believes he can somehow save him. An internet search returns website links alluding to the idea that the Click is a fraud, but the actual sites are all down. Believing there’s validity to these claims, Hitch, with help from a CIA contact, digs deeper. Information remains scarce, but Hitch does find allies, most notably U.S. President Andrea Wainwright, who has her hands on sensitive documents from the Church. These connect to the Click as well as a lethal virus the world ultimately overcame more than a century earlier. Hitch is clearly onto something, as certain agents, including his ex-lover Janine Rousseau, are aggressively pursuing him. With little time left to save Christopher, Hitch is determined to prevent his grandson’s imminent demise. Shear (The Fountain of Youth, 2017, etc.) quickly establishes a rapid pace, beginning with someone stealing the documents and racing to hide them. While technology in the story’s future world is nothing new (Scuds are handheld devices comparable to smartphones), provocative concepts abound. For one, the largely theocratic world has outlawed abortion and birth control, resulting in overpopulation, while gay sexuality and even in vitro fertilization are also illegal. Like most great heroes, Hitch is not without his faults: His goal is admirable, but he was also with Janine while married to Edna, an affectionate mother and grandmother. Meanwhile, though the documents’ revealed content isn’t surprising, there is a shocking double cross and a kidnapping or two.
Though it treads familiar terrain, this action-laden futuristic tale offers a captivating world and protagonist.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5092-2276-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Wild Rose Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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