Despite an overstuffed finale, the Mida gang’s latest proves a tighter, more emotionally involving installment than its...
Ernst and Sigafus’ (The Mida, 2014) supernaturally gifted carnies return to help one of their own free his wife from vengeful gangsters.
In August 1934, mob doctor Carter decides he wants out. With the help of their friend Walter, Carter and his wife, Genevieve, make a run for it. After the mob discovers their plan, however, Genevieve is captured, Walter goes into hiding, and Carter finds himself rescued by a mysterious carnival called the Mida. Led by the Ojibwa healer Mesa, the Mida travels throughout time, returning to the places from which its members fled so that they can confront their pasts. Its tents have now gone up in St. Paul, Minnesota, two weeks after Carter’s botched escape. Believing his wife to be dead, Carter tracks down Walter, who reveals that Genevieve is alive but in the clutches of the mob. Carter calls upon his fellow carnies—including “creature-whisperer” Frank and seer Connor—to help rescue his wife, even though their reunion means Carter must leave the carnival behind forever. Genevieve, meanwhile, murders her gangster captor Charles Watson, prompting Watson’s underling Joseph Morgan—a hardened mobster in love with Genevieve—to hide her from Leon Gleckman, the “Al Capone of St. Paul.” Compared to their previous book, which took on narratives by the boatload, this time around, Ernst and Sigafus wisely zero in on the dramatic twists and turns of Carter’s quest. The story’s emotional core—whether to embrace or shun intimacy when life requires you to be constantly on the move—reverberates throughout, particularly in the romantic subplot between Walter and smitten, reluctant Carlotta, the Mida’s resident “cooch dancer.” Though this newfound focus is a welcome improvement, it does have a drawback: the prominent storylines from the Mida’s earlier adventure—the tense reunion of Mesa and her son Tony; the constant threat of the evil spirit Jiibay, who dreams of controlling the carnival for nefarious purposes—either appear fleetingly or show up abruptly in the third act.
Despite an overstuffed finale, the Mida gang’s latest proves a tighter, more emotionally involving installment than its predecessor.Pub Date: April 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0991622795
Page Count: 254
Publisher: McIver Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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