by Vashti Quiroz-Vega ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2017
A well-written, descriptive, and dark creation story.
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Fallen angels battle for survival in Quiroz-Vega’s (The Basement, 2013) fantasy novel.
In the beginning, God created angels. His companions reside in Floraison, a beautiful and joyful location in the lowest level of heaven. Though given free will, they must be obedient and remain chaste. For the angel Lilith, this is a difficult proposition. Though she longs to be first in God’s eyes, Lilith questions the rules. Her slyness and disobedience cause turmoil and division among the angels. When God sorts the angels in a hierarchy, Lilith is unhappy. When God creates humans, Lilith is enraged and jealous. She sows the seeds of an uprising, eventually seducing Lucifer and encouraging him to revolt against God. A vicious battle ends in defeat for Lilith, Lucifer, and their allies. They are cast out of Floraison and banished to Earth, changed in form and ability. Some are given monsterlike characteristics, including Lilith, who is now half serpent. Lucifer becomes Satan, complete with red visage and spiky horns. The fallen angels struggle to find each other and battle to survive on the alien planet. They are vulnerable and able to be wounded by elements in their ecosystem. Though the angels can now enjoy pleasures of the flesh, it’s often violent and painful, especially for Lilith. Rather than experience heaven on Earth, the fallen angels lie, deceive, and suffer. Lilith craves revenge upon God, the angels, humans, and ultimately Satan himself. Quiroz-Vega offers a dark creation tale, a prologue of sorts to Adam and Eve. It’s a compelling narrative that provides background on several well-known, supernatural figures. Though obviously religious in nature, Quiroz-Vega’s book strays far from traditional biblical text. Sea monsters, mermaids, and vampires share the stage with angels and demons. And illicit (and explicit) affairs, violent battles, and graphic injuries abound. Quiroz-Vega’s prose is incredibly descriptive. The fallen angels, including a transformed Beelzebub, whose “arms and legs appeared gelatinous, punctuated by lumps of broken and calcified bone,” are painted with horrifying clarity.
A well-written, descriptive, and dark creation story.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 527
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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SEEN & HEARD
by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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by Lisa Jewell
BOOK REVIEW
by Lisa Jewell
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by Lisa Jewell
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