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
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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