A tech-heavy reimagining of Genesis and the Book of Revelation, with hit-and-miss results.
Horrible bloodshed, cryptic omens and a doomsday asteroid propel this angsty Christian sci-fi saga.
When archaeologist Jonah Lamb unearths a scroll in the Holy Land containing the prophecy that “a rock thrown by the priestess Juno will strike the earth,” his astrophysicist friend Martin Henley connects it to the comet that’s about to hit asteroid 3 Juno and knock it onto a collision-course with earth. Rejecting an invitation from snobby plutocrats to join them on their space station, Martin and Jonah activate a project to preserve a saving remnant in an “Ark”—a nuclear-powered bunker in Idaho where a young man and woman, thousands of frozen embryos, a garden and a two-by-two collection of animals will wait in cryogenic slumber to repopulate Earth once the asteroid radiation subsides in a few decades. All they need is a watchman, and who, they wonder, could be better than David Keyes, a doctor who has been in an alcoholic stupor ever since his family was slaughtered by psychopaths in the novel’s grisly opening chapter? David is dubious, but with God’s prompting he accepts the lonely mission to watch over the bunker’s sleeping “Adam” and “Eve.” Alas, every Eden has its serpent, and the devil’s murmured temptations prod David toward a crisis of faith—with all Creation hanging in the balance. The author crafts an arresting end-of-days scenario and invests his hero’s predicament—alone and despondent, David can never quite tell whether he is sane or delusional—with real pathos. The story often gets derailed by mythic and spiritual flourishes; there are extended scenes of the showdown between David and Goliath and the crucifixion of Jesus, and mystic soliloquies becalm the narrative. (“When you make the two into one and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower…then you too will enter the kingdom of heaven.”) Gregory’s pastiche of biblical and sci-fi motifs can feel contrived and heavy-handed.
A tech-heavy reimagining of Genesis and the Book of Revelation, with hit-and-miss results.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456558949
Page Count: 316
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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