A pleasingly complex entry in a YA SF epic.
Buckler (Stillness of Time, 2018, etc.) continues the interplanetary adventures of superpowered twins in this third installment in a YA series.
Elara and Cyrus were born on the beautiful but turbulent planet Aroonyx but raised as normal high school students on Earth. Their guide and mentor, Jax, who has the power to instantly travel between the two worlds, explained to them that Aroonyx is divided into Solin and Lunin people, all ruled by brutal dictator Zenith. As this installment opens, it’s been six weeks since Jax abandoned Elara and Cyrus—an especially traumatic development for Elara, who’d fallen in love with Jax. The story finds Elara and Cyrus deeply embedded in the planet’s struggle against Zenith’s forces on Aroonyx, and, as Elara reflects, “defeating Zenith without Jax’s guidance seemed like a lost cause.” War is imminent, but, unsurprisingly, Jax doesn’t stay missing for long; his emotional connection with Elara is the cornerstone of the series, and he’s also a key YA character type: the brooding hero; at one point, Elara even says that he’d make “a great Jon Snow” from Game of Thrones. Along the way, Elara and Cyrus must also face off with members of Zenith’s elite Inner Circle. Overall, this series entry successfully amps up both the political intrigue and the personal drama. Buckler has always shown a good deal of skill with dialogue and pacing, but both are considerably stronger here. The book offers very little in the way of exposition for readers who may be encountering the series for the first time, but Buckler still manages to incorporate enough information to make it possible to jump right into the story, including an initial character list. The fact that matters of world-changing importance are linked to sappy individual romances can seem a bit silly at times; Elara even asks at one point, “Is it too late to save the people of Aroonyx? Is it too late to save my relationship with Jax?” But the book’s other pleasures more than compensate for this.
A pleasingly complex entry in a YA SF epic.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73310-570-5
Page Count: 682
Publisher: Gratus Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2020
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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