An enthralling finish to a thoughtful, uplifting sci-fi series.
The finale to The Seekers trilogy finds Litwack’s (The Stuff of Stars, 2015, etc.) heroes returning to their home of Little Pond, hoping to wrest it from religious fanatics.
A fractured world suffers from spiritual and intellectual darkness. After avoiding war between two tribes across the sea, Orah and Nathaniel sail home to Little Pond. Their vessel is designed by the dreamers—whose minds have merged into a state beyond the physical—and carries more than 30 people, including Kara, mistress of the dreamers’ advanced technology, and Caleb, leader of the builders and warriors dedicated to living in harmony with nature. Also with the group is an “opaque black cube” with “bits of lightning flashing inside like a captive storm.” This device contains some of the disembodied dreamers, who will advise Kara and the seekers on how to handle the repressive Temple of Light. When Orah and her husband reach home, they find Nathaniel’s father a fugitive from the new regime, which denies individuals the freedom to think, feel, or even dress as the spirit craves. When they ask about their friend, the musician Thomas, they’re told, “He’s gone to a darker place.” To save him, the seekers marshal an army to march from Little Pond to Temple City, where the vicars are based. In this third installment, Litwack gives fans a plot both action-driven and cerebral. Though Caleb says, “no change comes without the shedding of blood,” Orah refuses to torture a captive deacon. Instead, they treat the man humanely, and he experiences the seekers’ philosophy firsthand. Portrayals of violence and its consequences will resonate with readers; after a battle, the living “suffered in silence, as if in sympathy with those silenced forever.” Litwack excels in poeticizing his themes with lines like, “If we are the stuff of stars, how can we act like beasts of the field?” All around, a superbly crafted adventure.
An enthralling finish to a thoughtful, uplifting sci-fi series.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62253-438-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: Evolved Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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