A well-drawn but ultimately tedious zoological allegory of American politics.
Pedigo gives former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump the Animal Farm treatment in this political allegory.
It’s been a few months since the animals of the City Zoo overthrew their human keepers and declared their independence. After a few unsuccessful attempts to reassert control, the city’s mayor has decided to let them have it, leaving the animals to govern the zoo at their own discretion. The animals quickly adopt the signifiers of nationhood—a flag, an Independence Day, a national anthem (“Animals of ev’ry kingdom, / Hearken to our tale of hope. / How we won the keys to freedom. / No more bars, or chains, or rope”). The business of governing, however, proves quite a bit harder. The thought leaders behind the initial revolution set up a power-sharing government with an Animal Zookeeper working alongside representatives of the zoo’s various habitats. Keeping order among the menagerie proves difficult, however. The monkey-run newspaper has its own agenda, and the predators—who agreed to go vegetarian during the revolution—start to break their truce. When the wise impartial leader Leo the lion dies, coalitions arise to fill the vacuum. There’s bound to be a showdown, but do either of the rival Animal Zookeepers—Gus the elephant or Balthazar the donkey—really represent the best interests of all species? The prose has the ironic distance of a folk tale: “The media latched on to Balthazar’s accusation that Gus was in league with the People somehow. After he was barred from Primate Plaza, the popular elephant began giving speeches to overflow crowds over in Picnic Park.” Pedigo displays impressive imagination when it comes to bringing this animal society to life, so much that his ham-fisted retelling of the Trump era—with Gus as Trump, Balthazar as Obama, and the “two-toed sloth Brandon” as Biden—feels like a waste of the world. It’s a sluggish, predetermined story, and its insights into the political process are neither novel nor profound. Readers would be better off just picking up Orwell again.
A well-drawn but ultimately tedious zoological allegory of American politics.Pub Date: July 17, 2024
ISBN: 9798350959369
Page Count: 240
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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