A familiar but entertaining take on the superhero genre.
After a mysterious encounter with a dying woman, an aspiring actress suddenly gains superpowers in Sherrier’s (Earths in Space, 2013, etc.) superhero novel.
Miranda Thomas is a young woman living in Olympus City, with a nascent acting career, overprotective parents, and typical middle-child dynamics with her two sisters. All of this changes, however, when she comes in contact with a mortally wounded woman with electricity-based superpowers who then disappears in front of her; soon, Miranda discovers that she now has powers of flight and super-strength. After a series of heroic actions covered by the media—such as preventing a plane crash (which she accidentally started) and defusing a hostage situation—she assumes the name Ultra Woman and joins two other superheroes, Fantastic Man and Mr. Amazing. Dubbed the Terrific Trio, they start piecing together clues about the origins of their powers, all while facing Olympus City’s first supervillain. Sherrier offers a thrilling origin story in this series starter. In certain aspects, his fast-paced novel feels very much like a comic book, as it embraces some stereotypical aspects of the genre (secret identities, a stark good-versus-evil setup). Nevertheless, the author plays with the form in refreshing ways, as the book pokes fun at superhero clichés in a self-aware fashion. For example, for a good part of the novel, Miranda refuses to wear a cape or tights, insisting on donning “nothing a normal person would refuse to wear in public setting.” Her older sister, Bianca, meanwhile, is depicted as “cringing, questioning, and condemning all at once” Fantastic Man’s over-the-top heroic mannerisms. It’s this deviation from the norm that makes Miranda’s journey shine. At the conclusion, there are still many unanswered questions for subsequent novels to tackle.
A familiar but entertaining take on the superhero genre.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72861-674-2
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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