A breezy sci-fi saga that will delight aficionados of both science and spirituality.
An offbeat novel about a group of spiritually gifted beings that discovers a means to bring their peaceful message to other planets.
Scherer’s debut is a crafty, bizarre hybrid of science fiction tropes, New-Age didacticism and old-fashioned conspiracy theory. In 2013, archeologists Carla and Norman Wallace discover an ancient spiritual library lost deep in a jungle. Seven decades into the future—with a blessed lack of exposition—Talia Jensen sits in a room and explores the world using only her spirit, which is unattached to her body; she’s one of only a few people who have mastered the higher techniques of the Wallace Doctrines, lessons discovered in the jungle library. On her astral-projection journey, however, she has a run-in with a soul trap, which almost catches her. She quickly gets a team together, including the handsome Robin Sanford, to locate the soul trap in the real world. Although Robin is hardly a master of astral projection, he’s bold and bright; however, the author doesn’t prolong Talia and Robin’s cheeky romantic subplot, and this thoughtful brevity keeps the story moving. The team manages to disable the soul trap and gives it to a group of scientists to reverse engineer. They don’t know who has placed the traps or why, but the new technology allows them to quickly develop the ability to travel to other star systems, and they hope to spread the Wallace Doctrines throughout the galaxy. They also discover a wicked cabal, headed by a family called the Withermites, that controls banks, media and political leaders. Readers may find the plot a bit absurd, but the novel has a self-reflexive tongue-in-cheek style that makes it all good fun. The novel’s political and spiritual messages are unguarded: peace over war, harmony over greed, truth over deception. Such messaging sometimes pulls readers out of the plot, but in general, the prose is so precise, and the story so concise, that readers will forgive the overt ideology—and anticipate the sequel hinted at on the final page.
A breezy sci-fi saga that will delight aficionados of both science and spirituality.Pub Date: April 22, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482069099
Page Count: 260
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2013
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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