A solid core of character and concept that needs tighter editing to bring it up to speed.
Rothwell’s post-apocalyptic debut novel takes place after global warming ravages Earth and a new world order cobbles the pieces of the United States into a hegemonic nightmare.
In this all-too-near future, two men find themselves entwined in a conspiracy that will determine the future of the planet. The first is Mark Stills, a man balancing single parenthood with a vendetta against the politician who killed his brother. The second is Marshall Wyenth, who’s sentenced to gladiatorial combat for smoking. He’s not savvy in the ways of armed combat, though; he’s simply a nuclear physicist having a couple of hard-knock days. Binding their fates is Melvin Eliot—two parts crooked politician, one part survivalist, with a dash of Bond villain—and his plot to lower the Earth’s temperature by way of a nuclear winter. In other words, Rothwell knows how to bring interesting characters together. Granted, most are archetypes well represented in the dystopian-future genre—the reluctant everyman, the arena combatant, the despotic politician—but they all come with fun touches of originality. The world also contains some nifty gadgets and a helping of scientific fact to keep the sci-fi feeling real. Unfortunately, it can all be a rough read. Information repeats too often, sometimes in the very next sentence: “Most civilians didn’t have any idea how far a car could go without having to recharge. Like anything with a battery in it, [Stills] knew the car had to be recharged, but it was a mystery how far they could go.” There’s little focus, too. The book’s first half cuts through the timeline with abandon, and its omniscient narrator can’t settle on a comfortable perspective. At one point, the novel leaps between four different viewpoints in less than three pages. Finally, Eliot’s plot to bring about nuclear winter fizzles by novel’s end, making him just another bad guy with a bomb.
A solid core of character and concept that needs tighter editing to bring it up to speed.Pub Date: July 22, 2012
ISBN: 978-0984744442
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Midnight Express Books
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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