An often engaging, if sometimes-clichéd, tale with an acerbic lead.
In Macaulay’s debut contemporary fantasy novel, a monster hunter pursues a yeti in the hostile winter landscape of the Himalayas and discovers the entrance to a hidden world.
Nick Ventner is a blue-collar hunter—a whiskey-soaked, seasoned pro in all things lurking in the shadows. Nick and his apprentice, James Schaefer, think they’re rescuing a village in the Himalayas from creatures called wargs, but it’s not wargs that have been picking off entire teams of climbers. It’s a yeti, and Nick’s nemesis, a rival hunter named Manchester, knows it too. Fueled by competition and the promise of seeing the enchanted region of Shangri-La (which the yeti guards), Nick and James seek to kill the creature and shut Shangri-La’s gates—and find out what riches lie beyond them. The novel uses a framing device similar to David Wong’s 2009 novel John Dies at the End, which works well; the present intrudes into the past-tense story to build suspense or establish Nick’s status as an unreliable narrator. He often embellishes, either intentionally or as a consequence of his alcohol intake; he’s a wonderfully human protagonist who makes mistakes and is ill-prepared for his treacherous journey. He doesn’t know everything, and doesn’t pretend to; instead, he relies heavily on Lopsang, a guide who’s far more than he seems. On occasion, the characterization of supporting characters seems inconsistent, and it sometimes feels as if certain details have been lost or misremembered. The first and last acts are the strongest, with their tight focus and legitimately harrowing situations that include glacial shifts and long-dead climbers. It’s also refreshing to see the mountain itself become an obstacle—one that’s just as deadly as the yeti. The middle, however, is weighed down with clichés, and sometimes feels like a greatest hits of the fantasy genre. Nick himself is a familiar character type, but he’s entertaining, with a biting sense of humor and a beating heart underneath all the bravado. The finale is a great setup for a continuation of a promising series.
An often engaging, if sometimes-clichéd, tale with an acerbic lead.Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9980211-4-0
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Aberrant Literature
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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