Takes time to find its footing, but a promising start for a sure-to-be epic tale of combative worlds.
After surviving a serious injury, a man soon realizes that he not only sees and hears demons, but feels destined to hunt and kill them in this series-opening supernatural debut.
Paul Stone’s devastation at witnessing a van smash into his best friend, Kris Reed, is compounded when Paul himself, checking on his maimed bestie, is sideswiped by a second car. He wakes up from a three-day coma, but Kris unfortunately dies. So it’s perfectly natural that Paul assumes he’s hallucinating when he later sees Kris watching TV. Kris, however, is there, a Guide for Paul, who as it happens is a Walker. Paul can cross between worlds, retaining his human life while also destroying demons—little red, horned beasts invisible to humans and feeding off individuals’ fear and negativity. Paul has help from Guide Kris (mostly providing information) as well as a healing ability and a special pocket watch that counts down to impending demon encounters. But something bigger is at play: Walkers are turning up dead, the only capable killers being God or another Walker. Paul teams up with a moderately good devil (devil’s not synonymous with demon), seeking assistance from both heaven and hell. But who knows what will transpire if Paul’s really the Stone Walker, prophesied to wage war on all demons and devils. While much of the story focuses on Paul learning about tales of angels and demons in conflict, the new Walker does engage in fisticuffs with demons and a few other things. The mystery of murdered Walkers wraps up in a satisfying, rapid-paced final act with bloody battles and a surprise or two. Contrarily, multiple chapters devoted to a character named Mason, who was driving one of those vehicles at the beginning, seem disconnected. The plotlines are indisputably linked, with Mason having his own demon. But his story too often veers into lengthy, uneventful scenes, like discussing music/musicians with potential lover/band mate Sarah, while his coda is weirdly ambiguous. Some of the main plot elements Norry (Zombie Zero: The First Zombie, 2016, etc.) leaves dangling, including the idea of an Original Demon. But the blistering cliffhanger ending makes clear that the author’s setting the stage for subsequent series entries.
Takes time to find its footing, but a promising start for a sure-to-be epic tale of combative worlds.Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9907280-2-3
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Sudden Insight Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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