Sisterly drama combines with a generous dosing of the supernatural in this intricate adventure for fans of urban fantasy.
The second book in Kobasic’s (Vanishing Twin, 2014, etc.) urban fantasy series about conjoined sisters.
Connected from the waist down, Scarlett and Jade are two sisters who don’t always get along. Nevertheless, they do fairly well in a world that will never accept them as normal. Having written a New York Times best-seller about their condition, the sisters live comfortably in Las Vegas, where they maintain a relationship with the famous magician Sebastian Cole, a man who “wasn’t an illusionist, but a true magician.” Rather, Scarlett maintains a relationship with Sebastian; the love between them leaves Jade little to do other than come along for the ride, a position for which she feels no qualms expressing her distaste. If only something could be done. As Scarlett points out, “You couldn’t find a book in some specialty shop that offered tips on how to deal with sharing your first love with your conjoined sister.” Meanwhile, a powerful and ancient group known as Lucifer’s Chosen wants Sebastian’s participation, and they have quite a deal to sweeten the agreement. “Scarlett and Sebastian will be presented with a choice,” says Ebony, a member of the Chosen: “[I]n order to have Scarlett’s soul unbound from Jade, she’ll have to turn to Lucifer.” Could the possibility of uncoupling his true love from her difficult sister be reason enough to join Lucifer’s legions? What would happen to Sebastian’s great magical abilities? Dotted with sexual scenes—“He lifted up my bra, and I pulled him close. His lips suckled my breasts, gently going from one to the other”—as the plot snowballs in complexity, the story takes the concept of conjoined sisters into new and strange places. Though overwrought when describing Sebastian’s ability to put on a Las Vegas show—including his latest creation: a magical ballet he designs with Scarlett—the book nevertheless manages superb pacing and regular excitement. Figures of good and evil continuously plot and pivot, creating a story that goes well beyond boy-meets–conjoined sisters. Readers seeking a love story charged with ancient magic and a remarkably novel physical predicament will not be disappointed.
Sisterly drama combines with a generous dosing of the supernatural in this intricate adventure for fans of urban fantasy.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9881554-4-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: Stone Series Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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