A well-constructed, compelling addition to an ongoing time-travel tale.
McClimans (Time Underground, 2015, etc.) returns to the time-traveling adventures of teens Kristi Connors and Ty Jordan in this third volume of his YA sci-fi series.
At George Washington Prep, seventh-grader Kristi is annoyed at having to share a room with her younger, bratty stepsister. To make matters worse, she misses her classmate and best friend, Ty, whom she last saw back in 1858; they’d taken a time machine to the days of the Underground Railroad to help her ancestor gain his freedom. Ty decided to remain in the past, where he, too, lives with a sibling of sorts: his much older twin, Thomas (it makes sense in context). When Kristi begins learning about the Civil War in school—a conflict in which 700,000 men died—she realizes that the war was only a couple of years into Ty’s future when she left him. She goes to Thomas’ farm, now a museum dedicated to the Underground Railroad, and is horrified to discover a grave on the property: “Ty Jordan / Born September 19, 1847 / Died September 17, 1862 / Beloved Brother, / Youngest Surgeon in the Union Army.” Back in the past, the novel follows Ty’s attempts to serve his country, not as a soldier but as a doctor. It’s a journey that will take him from the hospitals of Washington, D.C., to his inevitable death at the Battle of Antietam. Inevitable, that is, unless Kristi and her time machine can do something about it. Fans of the series will appreciate this latest entry, which tackles perhaps the most tumultuous American epoch of them all. McClimans alternates between Kristi’s and Ty’s perspectives to tell his story of two friends trying to stop each other from becoming casualties in the nation’s bloodiest war. He writes in a sharp, energetic prose (“Kristi Connors lunged to catch a rolling can of Coca-Cola as it spread a fizzling brown wave across her desktop”), and the novel’s quick pace and unusual chronology make for an engrossing read. The book also isn’t afraid to dive into the grittiness of the period—the political divisions that tear communities apart, the horrors of warfare, and the brutality of contemporary surgical practices—and yet it also manages to remain lively and fun.
A well-constructed, compelling addition to an ongoing time-travel tale.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-937997-73-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Overdue Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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