A thought-provoking story that suffers from a crisis of identity.
Hugie’s provocative work of speculative fiction is set in a world where people’s virtue is evident on their faces.
Recent high school graduate Alannah Merlot has a few months free before she begins classes in an art program at the local university. Wanting some experience in her future career field, she lands a temporary job as a staff assistant and part-time cartoonist at the same Colorado Springs magazine where her “goody two-shoes” brother, Tuck, works as an acclaimed journalist. Alannah’s penchant for finding loopholes in systems gets her into trouble when she begins to question how Visage—a mysterious mechanism that tracks people’s net morality by blemishing their skin to indicate transgressions—really works. Was a person with a clear complexion really a stalwart of moral living? Was a person whose skin was covered in gray splotches a criminal? While uncovering a grand-scale conspiracy involving corrupt government officials and the police, Alannah finds herself entangled in a deadly conflict involving anarchist criminals, a repressed homeless population being targeted by systemic injustice, and a group of vigilantes attempting to enforce social balance. Character development is a definite strength of the novel. The author brings Alannah alive; she’s an insightfully portrayed character with an irrepressible sense of humor and wit. The pacing is impressively brisk throughout, and the plot is intricate enough to keep readers on the edges of their seats. The complete lack of an explanation of Visage, however, is a problem. Why, and how, was it created? How does it work? Are humans implanted with a microchip at birth? Are people worldwide affected by Visage? This murky narrative vagueness radically undercuts the power of the story. The lack of elucidation grows more pronounced as the story transforms from what initially seems to be an SF-inflected government conspiracy yarn into a paranormal fantasy, replete with over-the-top characters with superpowers.
A thought-provoking story that suffers from a crisis of identity.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2023
ISBN: 9781685133269
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
