An action-packed conclusion to a sci-fi series that mostly satisfies.
A struggle to defeat a power-mad clan leader and his sinister brother reaches the crisis point across three worlds in this final installment of The Weir Chronicles.
Earth’s counterpart, the parallel world of Thrae, has had its core almost entirely drained by Duach leader Aeros and his Pur brother, the Primary. Wracked by earthquakes and volcanoes, Thrae is running out of time. It’s up to the three Heirs—Earth-dwelling Ian Black, Thrae’s Jaered, and Patrick Langtree, the son of a Duach rebel leader—to work together to save Earth from the same fate. Patrick has only just learned that he is a Weir, a steward of the Earth who wields magical powers. The three Heirs are not alone: Their formidable mothers, Gwynn, Sophenna, and Eve, are on their side, along with Rayne Bevan, a potent Weir (and Ian’s star-crossed girlfriend). Rayne is able to drain the magical core of any Weir who touches her. While Ian and Rayne return to Thrae to evacuate the population—and ask the planet’s most fearsome creatures for aid—Patrick and Jaered scheme to steal the Primary’s hoard of wealth, suspecting he’s trying to smuggle it from Earth to a third parallel world, Smara, to start over again in style. As if that’s not enough, they realize that to truly defeat Aeros and the Primary, they must break the Curse that keeps their followers, the Pur and the Duach, apart—but how? Duff’s (Off Beat: Nine Spins on Song, 2017, etc.) sci-fi series has gotten better with every book, and that’s true in this fifth volume, too—she jumps right into the action with a fast-paced escape and rarely lets up. Her characters trot across three globes, with the scenery changing from Paris to Brazil, from the North Pole to the Bermuda Triangle. And she writes intense, propulsive fight scenes—there’s an unforgettable image in the climax of a dragon versus a squadron of fighter jets. The stakes are sky high, with planets in the balance, but there are smaller stories too, like Ian and Rayne’s romance, stymied from the start by their inability to touch without her sapping his powers. Duff ties these tales up neatly as well. But it’s unfortunate that her female characters get short shrift in the end.
An action-packed conclusion to a sci-fi series that mostly satisfies.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9970156-8-3
Page Count: 249
Publisher: CrossWinds Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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