Nail-biting fun amid near-future pseudo-science.
Planet Earth is fried and fricasseed in this wildly suspenseful post-apocalyptic action yarn only partially set deep beneath the ocean waves.
Compared to the sun-scarred humans still clinging to life topside, young biologist Jesse Baines is living well. Pacifica—the secret undersea lab nestled off the coast of San Diego where he and a community of other scientists have taken refuge after society’s collapse—is a self-sufficient oasis far from the reach of marauding cannibals. Still, Jesse can’t shake the feeling of being imprisoned in this pineapple under the sea, so he longs for a chance to ditch his cushy confines. When an unexpected disaster threatens Pacifica, he leaps at the chance to take part in a risky reconnaissance mission to recover some necessary items stored back on land. What unfolds next is all part of an ambitious plot that evokes elements of The Road and BioShock, the epic video game. Pryce’s muscular prose is relentlessly descriptive and often times even poetic in its blood and guts portrayal of a world seared into insanity. A keen sense of apprehension and anxiety consistently stokes the engines of suspense in an inexorable march toward ultimate calamity. Things only start to lag once the door is thrown open and the boogieman let out. Although artfully rendered, the main villain here is either a clichéd madman (right down to his evil genius grin), or (more generously) a loving homage to every Hollywood bad guy who’s ever plotted to take over the world. The story’s deep, dark, terrible secret, meanwhile, is a conspiracy theorist’s fantasy whirling with fears of overpopulation, global warning, genetic engineering and cloning. Some of the plot points seem a bit forced in order to facilitate the high adrenaline set pieces, while at least two other story threads are left virtually high and dry. But vividly rendered characters worth rooting for and supremely orchestrated action combine to compensate for any listing that might occur, which helps keep this semi-aquatic adventure on course to a thrilling conclusion.
Nail-biting fun amid near-future pseudo-science.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-0984669103
Page Count: 386
Publisher: Cenozoic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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