An entertaining series denouement that runs at full tilt.
Two newlyweds on their honeymoon, a hacker and a former Mossad assassin, learn of a potentially dangerous covert op in the 10th installment of the Spies Lie thriller series.
Stanford University senior Ann Sashakovich has just faced off against a rogue artificial intelligence, with help from the AI she and fellow students built. But now she has more pressing issues, such as choosing a career path and marrying the much older man she loves, Jon Sommers, a former Mossad operative. Amid ongoing classes and impending interviews with potential employers ranging from the CIA to Google, Ann must also persuade her adoptive parents to OK her wedding. They’re uncomfortable with the couple’s age discrepancy, and Jon is their boss at the U.N. Paramilitary Force. Then Mossad director Avram Shimmel reactivates Jon so he can help track down terrorists in Israel whose bomb killed hundreds, including Avram’s wife. Ann reluctantly agrees to accept the offer of an accompanying job as a Mossad hacker, provided she and Jon first tie the knot. Unfortunately, the newlyweds’ London honeymoon puts them somewhat near a dead drop in Scotland—blueprints for a military weapon linked to the bombing. The couple go on an Edinburgh whisky tour for intel—until someone desperate for a vital thumb drive starts knocking off tourists; honeymoon or not, Jon wants to get to the bottom of it. Kane (brAInbender, 2018, etc.) jam-packs his story with easy-to-keep-track-of characters, including returning ones such as Ann’s parents, Lee Ainsley, and the original series protagonist, Cassie Sashakovich. Moreover, narrative shifts among so many people make for brief scenes and a consistently speedy pace. The story lacks a few pertinent details: Ann and Jon’s trip from London to Edinburgh, for example, has an inexplicable 18-day gap. Still, it’s exhilarating to watch Ann’s intermittent displays of special talents, such as the ability to access the internet mentally, stemming from a prior nanodevice overdose. Although this book is said to be the last in the series, some characters’ open endings leave room for spinoffs.
An entertaining series denouement that runs at full tilt.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9996554-7-4
Page Count: 283
Publisher: Swiftshadow Group, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2020
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2024 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.
