A spirited, ambitious start to a planned series.
In McDowell’s fantasy debut, a Virginia college student learns that he’s fated to restore peace and balance to four realms—but he may instead lay waste to everything.
Freshman Adam Taylor is looking forward to a North Carolina archaeological dig with professor Lance Washington and his fellow students. But the rock they’re looking for, the Nezera, turns out to have ties to Adam and his friends Nolan Williams, Jessica Jefferson, and Mary Glass. They’re all direct descendants of founding members of the Order. This centuries-old group, to which the professor currently belongs, protects the human realm of Calterone. There are three other realms as well, but Kitrona, where the evil Grey Bloods reside, is the greatest concern. The Grey Bloods can destroy all the other realms if they possess the Nezera, which, according to prophecy, can only be found by someone known as “the Sequoia.” Washington ultimately determines that Adam is the Sequoia, and he enlists him and his pals into the Order so that they can undergo the extensive training they’ll need for their mission. Meanwhile, Grey Bloods start showing up in Calterone—one or two at time—with violent intentions. Adam has the power to return all the realms to harmony, but new information about his parents’ mysterious deaths could send him on a different, more destructive path. McDowell’s plot gets progressively more engaging as it unfolds. After he firmly establishes the Grey Bloods as formidable villains, he introduces characters from other realms, including vampire-esque Boefangs and others that could be either friends or foes. The Order also gets a rich historical background; for instance, its members’ weapons, Ceptors, contain pieces of a particularly famous lightning rod. That said, McDowell sometimes skimps on narrative details. He offers no description of one minor character, for instance, other than to say that he’s a gnome. Still, he delivers a fantasy tale that’s unusually free of obscenities and graphic violence, although torture scenes are implied. There are also some exciting plot turns, such as the revelation of a mole within the Order.
A spirited, ambitious start to a planned series.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-692-07506-7
Page Count: 364
Publisher: Arjon Media & Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2018
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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