Fans of Indiana Jones movies and Dan Brown novels will enjoy this one.
A thriller that dips into ancient myths, folklore, and the Old Testament to tell about a race to find giants.
Ethan McCloud is a laid-off math teacher from Nebraska whose dad asks if he’s seen a six-fingered man. Dad is then killed either by an aneurism or by the Six-Fingered Man, and either way, “Burying a father sucks.” Father leaves behind a video urging his son to search for giants because “you think critically and base your answers on provable facts.” Ethan tells his girlfriend, Shanny, that he has “information about how no shit real giants exist.” Indeed, he’s shown a picture of a skeleton, “a living, breathing, human-shaped thing, seventy-five feet tall.” But searching is a dangerous business. People die after discovering giant bones because “They just knew too much.” There are many biblical references to giants which Ethan considers to be evidence. He muses, what if we descended from giants instead of from apes? “This isn’t just a race to find giants,” Shanny declares. “It’s a race to find God.” The story moves along reasonably well, with the usual threats, like the girlfriend being in mortal danger. But the pacing hits a speed bump when Ethan brings up an abstruse mathematical concept called the Hodge Conjecture in painful detail and fails to show its relevance. And while the writing and storytelling are entertaining, the author’s metaphors just work too hard. “The distance to the trailer was a rheostat of fear.” A man’s “mouth slammed into a frown.” “Butterflies scythed through Ethan.” And “his mind filled with ants who were busy rebuilding the possible futures.” The best exchange, though: “I thought you were dead.” “I got better.”
Fans of Indiana Jones movies and Dan Brown novels will enjoy this one.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-5009-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.
More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.
In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to the case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new investigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come.
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063336773
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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