Girl meets boy, becomes a vampire, and learns the ways of the undead in this entertaining but familiar tale.
A newly born vampire navigates the ins and outs of the supernatural world in this series opener.
Pandora Todd is a bit of an odd duck. While living a seemingly normal life in California, she experiences an occasional “episode” or two. Like the time her dead grandmother wakes up in her coffin and speaks to Dora. But life gets especially strange when Dora joins the ranks of the undead. She is shot and killed by an unknown assailant outside a bar in Los Angeles. Luckily, a handsome vampire named Remy (whose protective nature, age, and skill set recall numerous other literary vamps) is on hand to bring her back to life. Thus, Dora’s new journey begins. Under Remy’s tutelage, she learns the ways of the supernatural world. There are werewolves, witches, zombies, and a governing body known as the Order that keeps everyone in line. But as Dora and Remy quickly discover, she isn’t your run-of-the-mill vampire. She is also a necromancer who can raise the dead and create zombies of her own. But there’s another necromancer lurking in the shadows, an unknown threat that Dora and Remy can’t quite figure out. Wahlin (Thirteen Offerings, 2015) does a nice job creating Dora’s world and building a society of supernatural creatures who roam the streets largely without human knowledge. Some of the more humorous moments in the narrative are thanks to the author’s clever juxtaposition of the excitement and adventure of becoming a vampire with the decidedly less sexy reality of everyday life. In addition to learning how to feed off humans and control her superstrength, Dora still needs to find a job. The decision to make Dora a necromancer is also a good one. It’s a nice twist in an otherwise standard vampire tale. The vamp romance, interactions between the living and the dead, and a score of supernatural beings have been well-explored by characters such as Stephenie Meyer’s Edward Cullen, Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse, and others.
Girl meets boy, becomes a vampire, and learns the ways of the undead in this entertaining but familiar tale.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5335-6619-5
Page Count: 536
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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