Corporate espionage meets magic in this entertaining sequel.
The second book of Duff’s (Stack a Deck, 2017, etc.) Weir Chronicles embroils college student Rayne Bevan further in a millennia-old war—while she continues to fall for powerful magician Ian Black.
In the first book, Rayne learned of the Weir, an ancient alien race who are stewards of nature and dwell unknown alongside humans. They split into two factions, the well-intentioned Pur and the nefarious Duach. Duach leader Aeros commissioned a deadly biological weapon from Richard Donovan, CEO of Lux Pharmaceuticals, that’s able to kill Sars, the firstborn sons of the Weir who possess various magical powers. What Aeros doesn’t know is that his own son, Jaered, is in league with rebel leader Eve and that he plans to save humanity and Earth from his father’s scheming by stealing the bioweapon. Meanwhile, Ian has been enlisted by his manager’s mother, JoAnna Langtree, to use his illusionist skills to rescue Donovan’s wife, Carlene, and son, Bryant, from the CEO’s grasp—but he soon realizes there’s more to Donovan and his son than meets the eye. Jaered, determined to keep the Sar-destroying serum out of his father’s hands, is willing to exchange the deaths of Donovan’s family for the vial. Will Ian, Rayne, and their allies save them in time? While the first installment sometimes overwhelmed with back story, all the previous exposition allows this book to move at a quick, exciting pace, particularly during Ian’s and Jaered’s simultaneous heists at Lux Pharmaceuticals. A dizzying number of characters both old and new might challenge readers’ memories. Rayne and Ian’s romance, stymied by the fact that they cannot touch without Ian’s suffering terrible pain, gets little airtime, but there’s plenty of action and intrigue to spare.
Corporate espionage meets magic in this entertaining sequel.Pub Date: April 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9905628-5-6
Page Count: 382
Publisher: CrossWinds Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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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