A thin but entertaining superhero story.
In a world where superheroes roam freely among humans, a man tries to avenge the death of his wife.
Hartman (When Santa Came to Town, 2014) and Bedford set their novel in the fictional town of Liar’s Paradise, where superheroes and supervillains roam the streets. Unfortunately, the Cadet, the town’s most prominent hero, abuses his powers by sleeping with adoring women, even going so far as to stage accidents from which he can then rescue them. None of this really matters much to the novel’s hero, reformed criminal Lex Tennessee, who is mostly focused on his new legitimate job and his beloved wife, Peggy. However, this changes when Peggy has an affair with the Cadet and is then killed in a mysterious accident. When he realizes the truth about the Cadet, Lex dedicates himself to finding the hero’s weakness and avenging his wife’s death, with a little help from some former supervillains. This universe is an intriguing one where heroes and villains are part of the fabric of everyday life—and where the line between hero and villain is sometimes thinner than expected. The story is built on a fantastic idea that has shades of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ classic graphic novel Watchmen, albeit without such darkness. Readers might wish for a little more fleshing out of this novel’s world: How long have superheroes been a part of the life of Liar’s Paradise? Are there other heroes waiting to take the Cadet’s place? Answers to these questions and others would have helped to develop a fuller, richer world for the story to inhabit. Instead, it’s mostly swagger and violence as people shout lines like “Show’s over, asshole!” The characters are also rather thinly drawn, especially the females; from saintly Peggy to sexy but villainous Airy Phantom, they don’t quite leap off the page as fully three-dimensional figures. It seems clear that Hartman and Bedford are planning to expand this novel into a series. More careful development of the people and their motivations—instead of relying too much on cartoonish dialogue and action sequences—might serve them well.
A thin but entertaining superhero story.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-0980223811
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Sparkony Entertainment, LLC
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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