by Tim Langdell ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 21, 2017
A delightfully whimsical but somewhat convoluted tale that features otherworldly beings.
A sci-fi novel explores one oddly missed connection.
The Angeli called Nigel is attempting to help a man named Tom Nichols when he abruptly takes Tom out of existence. Before this cataclysmic event, Tom was having lunch with his girlfriend, Jane, and was about to reveal how much he cared for her. Tom was waiting for a sign from the universe to tell Jane his feelings when Nigel, who had been sent to monitor the two, made their lunch table jump and inadvertently caused Tom to vanish. After that incident, Jane fails to remember poor Tom at all. The mishap has the effect of complicating the space-time continuum or, as it is referred to in the story, “All That Is.” As the narrative explains, “Tom and Jane must unite for the sake of All That Is.” Further muddling the situation is the fact that Jane—who is soon taken out of existence as well—and Tom find themselves in a bizarre world populated by Imps, Angeliti (Nigel’s cohorts), Etheriati, and similar creatures, who are essentially humanlike though they are clearly nonhuman. The Cherubithim, for instance, appear as babies the size of men, have tongue-in-cheek names like Dyper Ash, and live for thousands of years. But will the efforts of such figures ever be enough to get Tom and Jane back together again? This strange question is answered through a bizarre romp in a world where it seems just about anything can happen. From flaming food to a talking walking stick, Langdell’s (Virtual Reality Beyond Imagination, 1995, etc.) series opener incorporates a great deal of dreamlike qualities spiked with Douglas Adams–esque humor. There is a book called Cosmic Law that states, among other things, that “the phrase ‘won’t regret it’ actually means ‘will regret it’ 87.36 % of the time.” While it’s not The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Langdell’s novel delivers a playful and unpredictable ride. Take, for instance, the addition of a man named Bill, who had “somehow got across the Veil on his own.” Though readers may feel lost at times among all the eerie and complex episodes, how the story will conclude is very much up in the air until the end.
A delightfully whimsical but somewhat convoluted tale that features otherworldly beings.Pub Date: July 21, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Oxbridge Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
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. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
winner
National Book Award Finalist
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
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