This sprawling historical novel has an explosive concept at its heart: the discovery of an ancient, alternative Quran.
Balderston’s (The Proven God, 2011) latest book begins in fairly familiar Da Vinci Code territory: Bobby Johnson and Grace Richards are working on the renovation of an old church named Trinity when they discover a crypt and hints of an ancient library on the premises. They learn that the building is owned by a shadowy organization called the Alpha and Omega Society for the Preservation of Truth. For decades, the society has boarded up the library rather than allow its books to incite the world’s anger and rejection—particularly The Wonder of Terra by Father John “Poggio” Dolan, who’d been a part of the society for years but has since retired to Colorado. In order to understand The Wonder, Bobby, Grace and the head of the society jet off to see Dolan, who has a bombshell for them all: Years before, he bought an old manuscript he thought was an ancient Quran, until Ali Malek, a Lebanese friend of his, studied the manuscript and was astonished to discover that it wasn’t a Quran. Rather, it was some kind of alternate Islamic text every bit as old as the Muslim holy book but radically different in several key ways that, if verified and published, would be revolutionary. They anticipate the outrage of the ulema, the scholars of Islam, who’ll cite the relevant passages from the Quran utterly forbidding additions and alterations, let alone wholesale revisions. This alternate Quran could provoke “a battle for control of the Muslim world.” Balderston varies these present-day theological tensions with extensive, well-realized historical segments dramatizing the book’s long history. However, the vibrancy of this history might lead conservative sects to a simple solution: “It was a book that needed to be destroyed.” Balderston skillfully balances these separate strands, blending the past and the present in a potent mixture that will please all but the most religiously zealous readers.
A textured, intriguing novel about a world-changing holy book.
Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Tate Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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Despite some distractions, there’s an irresistible charm to Owens’ first foray into nature-infused romantic fiction.
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A wild child’s isolated, dirt-poor upbringing in a Southern coastal wilderness fails to shield her from heartbreak or an accusation of murder.
“The Marsh Girl,” “swamp trash”—Catherine “Kya” Clark is a figure of mystery and prejudice in the remote North Carolina coastal community of Barkley Cove in the 1950s and '60s. Abandoned by a mother no longer able to endure her drunken husband’s beatings and then by her four siblings, Kya grows up in the careless, sometimes-savage company of her father, who eventually disappears, too. Alone, virtually or actually, from age 6, Kya learns both to be self-sufficient and to find solace and company in her fertile natural surroundings. Owens (Secrets of the Savanna, 2006, etc.), the accomplished co-author of several nonfiction books on wildlife, is at her best reflecting Kya’s fascination with the birds, insects, dappled light, and shifting tides of the marshes. The girl’s collections of shells and feathers, her communion with the gulls, her exploration of the wetlands are evoked in lyrical phrasing which only occasionally tips into excess. But as the child turns teenager and is befriended by local boy Tate Walker, who teaches her to read, the novel settles into a less magical, more predictable pattern. Interspersed with Kya’s coming-of-age is the 1969 murder investigation arising from the discovery of a man’s body in the marsh. The victim is Chase Andrews, “star quarterback and town hot shot,” who was once Kya’s lover. In the eyes of a pair of semicomic local police officers, Kya will eventually become the chief suspect and must stand trial. By now the novel’s weaknesses have become apparent: the monochromatic characterization (good boy Tate, bad boy Chase) and implausibilities (Kya evolves into a polymath—a published writer, artist, and poet), yet the closing twist is perhaps its most memorable oddity.
Despite some distractions, there’s an irresistible charm to Owens’ first foray into nature-infused romantic fiction.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1909-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
Categories: LITERARY FICTION
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