by T. A. Davis ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 24, 2015
Despite this entry’s occasional flaws, readers will welcome more books in this series.
Liam O’Neal, the protagonist of Davis’ debut novel, has a very special gift: he can delve into the consciousnesses of people who are locked in comas—and sometimes bring them out of them.
The Irish protagonist has his gift because of childhood traumas, both physical—a bullet, still in his brain—and psychological—due to the shock of seeing his father, mother, and brother murdered by Irish Republican Army terrorists in 1980. In 2013, Liam, now in his 40s, lives in Bay Village, New Hampshire, and makes a living repairing boats. He has a good friend, Father Martin, his mentor from orphanage days, who urges him to take some coma cases. One is little Sarah Williams, who fell through the ice in a nearby pond; she was under so long that she’s since been declared brain dead. Another is Thomas McIntyre, who ran into a street and was struck by a car in a hit-and-run. Liam takes both cases, and his journeys into their minds are terrifying. He backs off of Sarah’s case, badly shaken, when it hits too close to home, but in Thomas’ case, he slowly earns the lad’s trust as he realizes that the young man blames himself for his parents’ estrangement. Liam protests that he’s no miracle worker, but Davis shows him to be a good man with an innate sensitivity and resourcefulness (“gift” aside) that usually pull him and his “patients” through. The book’s diction and phrasing are sometimes stilted and awkward (“an open window with a screen to prevent bugs”; “unmade mattresses”). However, Davis handles the coma sections well, truly pulling readers into these unconscious realities, these liminal states. He also does a very good job of toggling between the past and the present—his flashbacks are almost seamless. Although the author protests in a preface that he has no real expertise in medicine or boat repair, his attention to detail will persuade readers otherwise and anchor them in his story’s “real” world.
Despite this entry’s occasional flaws, readers will welcome more books in this series.Pub Date: June 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5119-2801-4
Page Count: 292
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Margaret Atwood ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2019
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
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Booker Prize Winner
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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edited by Margaret Atwood & Douglas Preston
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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