A medical thriller details a surgeon’s humanitarian mission in eastern Turkey, a region ravaged by sectarian strife and terrorism.
A catastrophic earthquake strikes eastern Turkey, killing thousands and maiming more. Dr. Nicklaus “Nick” Hart, an orthopedic surgeon in Memphis, takes a leave of absence from work to travel there and lend his expert assistance, joined by Ali Hassan, a young surgeon-in-training under his tutelage. Ali is originally from the city of Van, the central site of the disaster. When Nick arrives, he’s confronted by grim conditions: inadequate supplies, disfigured children, and a queue of amputations to perform. Ali is determined to track down his aging parents amid the chaos, and Nick reaches out to old friends Maggie and Buck for assistance, characters reprised from Browne’s (Maya Hope, 2017) first book in his Nicklaus Hart series. Meanwhile, two agents of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Antasha Katrina and Vladimir, are sent to Turkey to find the biblical Tree of Life, reputed to promise extraordinary longevity, if not immortality, a mission personally assigned by President Vladimir Putin. In addition, an Islamic State terrorist band plans to exploit the turmoil of the calamity, infiltrating the area by posing as humanitarian aid workers while sneaking in explosives. Repeating a central theme of the first installment of the series, Nick wrestles with doubt regarding his life’s purpose, especially his Christian faith, a struggle that brings him to the brink of despair. His religious turmoil is set against the backdrop of the age-old antagonism between Shia and Sunni Muslims on ancient Mesopotamian grounds; the author deftly uses characters like Ali, a Kurdish Shia Muslim, and Antasha, a lapsed Jew, to illustrate the region’s immemorial rivalries. Browne has crafted a historically astute and dramatically exciting novel that offers both theological insights and a surfeit of action. He admirably avoids the pitfalls of facile caricature, and seeks an empathetic comprehension of even the least attractive characters, resulting in an impressive moral study. But, as in its predecessor, there is simply too much crammed into one book, with plot overkill that leads to a bloated length. In addition, the story’s message of Christian hope is at times heavy-handedly proselytizing.
An unusually thoughtful action-adventure tale, sometimes sabotaged by an excess of ambition.Pub Date: April 30, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 491
Publisher: Agape Orthopaedics, Inc.
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
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Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Categories: GENERAL ROMANCE | ROMANCE | CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
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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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