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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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