Thoughtful and exciting, with wonderfully imagined characters.
A teenage girl with powerful abilities aids imprisoned gods and helps defend a village from evil scientists in this concluding installment of a trilogy.
Celeste Araia Nolan, about 14, is a survivor of The Event, a cataclysmic disaster that swallowed up her parents and led to many strange, fluxing transformations of people and animals. Everyone has copper skin; some creatures meld together, like Lou and Layla—a “spectacular fusion of peacock and horse.” In Books I and II, Celeste discovered she could fly, rescued a village of children, trapped two feuding gods, discovered the lair of insane scientists who caused The Event, and helped release Zoya, a giant octopus held captive by the scientists, from agony. “I’m more than just a girl. I’ve done things,” says Celeste. Now, with one member of her lost family restored, Celeste has a new mission: Release the gods from their prisons to restore the planet’s balance, bring two kidnapped children home, and defend her village from the villainous scientists, who are building an army of invasion. Meanwhile, Celeste is enjoying her mutual attraction with Nick, who stirs new feelings and makes her feel beautiful. With help from allies like Old Man Massive, a sentient mountain, Celeste discovers more about her powers and faces her greatest challenge yet—one that will change her forever. McHargue (Waterwight Flux, 2017, etc.) packs a lot into this fast-moving final volume. While backstory is well-integrated into the narrative, this isn’t a stand-alone novel. That said, in many ways this outing, with its clearly stated quest and thrilling showdown, is easier to follow than the first two. The trilogy’s side characters, often so bizarre due to the flux, are now more familiar and often possess a rare individual charm—such as Orville, an “emerald-winged man,” who has also been a French-speaking windup frog. Celeste’s young romance helps balance her superpowers; as she says, “I may not be just a girl, but I’m still a girl.” Among so many cookie-cutter YA fantasies, McHargue’s originality is a pleasure to encounter.
Thoughtful and exciting, with wonderfully imagined characters.Pub Date: March 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9969711-3-3
Page Count: 213
Publisher: Strack Press LLC
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2019
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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