Space-bear storm troopers, star pirates, femme fatale cyborgs, and lost princes and princesses add up to fun for genre...
Rendered fugitives after religious fanatics bent on conquest attack their planet, a brother and sister join a motley band of interstellar smugglers in this sci-fi series opener.
In the spacegoing future, Earth’s empire (aka the Terran Confederation) competes against two principal races, the amphibious and psychic Dru and the foxlike engineering geniuses the Muscat. Mutual suspicion and rivalry have prevented these three mighty forces from forging an effective, united front against the new bad guys on the scene: the bullying Erethizon, descriptively nicknamed “Porcu-bears,” hairy near barbarians (barbearians?) who are driven by a jihadlike religious crusade to seize control over every world they can get their claws on. Nonallied, independent planets are the easiest pickings, and an Erethizon fleet blitzkriegs the human settlement of Yale. The act makes refugees out of two citizens who would have been prize hostages for the invaders: navigator Mark Martin and his medic sister, Sophia, both military-trained progeny of a popular Yale senator. In desperation, the siblings bunk aboard the Leonard Fox, a tricked-out freighter that is really a pirate vessel (more of a smuggler ship, actually), making shadowy cargo runs for a galactic crime kingpin under the businesslike command of Capt. Jennifer Houston. Equality between the sexes, for the most part, is a sidelight of the universe Leatherman (Marque of the Son, 2017) builds. The newcomers integrate with the diverse crew even as continual harassment by dogged Erethizon pursuers strongly suggests there is something onboard the Leo that the conquerors desperately want—and that there may be a traitor in the crew helping them. The author begins a multivolume space-opera saga in breezy, rousing fashion. The novel is an enjoyable setup, lean in prose, pithy in dialogue (“We rely on blockade runners like Captain Houston over there. They charge us like a bathroom call girl, but we gotta pay to dance”), and generous with action and motley characters delineated in sparse, broad strokes. (Even if protagonist Mark, through whose eyes the first-person narrative unfolds, could have used a bit more color.) Readers who want fuller details of the history, technology, cultures, and intrigues (particularly the late-appearing “bear zombies”) skillfully dreamed up by Leatherman will be strongly lured into charting a warp-speed course for the sequels.
Space-bear storm troopers, star pirates, femme fatale cyborgs, and lost princes and princesses add up to fun for genre readers in search of diversion.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9983002-1-4
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Fivefold Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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