This frightening tale of a Christian heroine battling satanic forces emphasizes the power of prayer, forgiveness, and love.
A psycho killer, several cops, and a suburban mom become intertwined with angels and demons in this faith-based paranormal thriller.
If a movie should ever be made of this final installment in Faggioli’s (One In A Million, 2016, etc.) trilogy, the Eagles’ “Hotel California” might be a contender for the theme song. Like the tune’s lyrics, book passages reference voices that call in the middle of the night, characters who are prisoners of their own devices, and spirits that could be in heaven or could be in hell. The trilogy’s main character, Kyle Fasano, continues to suffer the cosmic aftershocks of his act of adultery as he travels other realms unaware of his intended destination. The angel known as the Gray Man, who accompanies him, acts as a heavenly detective on the hunt for Kyle’s wife, Tamara. She’s been taken prisoner by the unhinged Troy Forester, a slave to the devil himself. Tamara grew up in Bolivia, where her missionary parents taught her that “God speaks to us in all situations.” That belief allows her to withstand recent events, including her cheating husband’s supernatural disappearance and her own kidnapping from the home in which she lived as a single mom with her two children. But they had not been alone in the dwelling; something had been hiding under a bed, and it wasn’t dust bunnies. It was evil that came into the residence through an old, rusted lantern a co-worker had left on the doorstep. The true star of this scary volume is Tamara. Hell hath no fury like this captured woman, a committed Christian and certified badass with a mean right hook and killer moves with a hose. Good and evil take turns in the spotlight, with the latter generally resulting in quicker page turning, such as the violent episode in which Kyle and the Gray Man encounter piranhalike, toothed demons, who split to multiply by regeneration (“They simply dug their fingers into their faces, through their own skin…as they tore themselves completely in half”). The pacing is swift and the dialogue believable. Loose strings from the first two books tie together, and there is no unnecessary prologue as in the previous volume.
This frightening tale of a Christian heroine battling satanic forces emphasizes the power of prayer, forgiveness, and love.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9978974-6-3
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Atticus Creative
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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