A studiously chilling post-apocalyptic tale.
In this dystopian debut, a woman with magical abilities longs to escape the influence of her scientist father, who wants to guide humanity’s evolution.
During the War of 2018, the Magical Bond, people gifted with telekinesis and other skills, decimated the Common Blood, who lacked special powers. Now, in 2031, the ultrarich enjoy New York’s high life while destitute masses huddle in the shadows. Across the East River is Research Island. Dr. Daniel Hunter runs the Institute for Scientific Understanding of Magic, where he hopes to reverse the gradual diminishing of magical genes within the populace. One night, Ebony, his daughter, is enjoying the solitude of the island’s lighthouse. She can teleport objects, but she’s also beamed herself there, a facet of her power that she keeps secret. When Ebony sees a transport vessel offload people in shackles, little does she realize that a quartet of covert agents from the Order of Peace has arrived. The group—Connor Vance, Katrina Hicks, Ness Kent, and Lina Sharp—plans to assassinate the Magical Bond who’ve been enhanced by Daniel’s work. They know the truth behind the institute that Ebony doesn’t dare acknowledge—that the demanding Daniel doesn’t want to build genetic bridges with the Common Blood. He wishes to obliterate them. In her novel, Bochnak taps into the fears Americans face in 2018 (like nuclear war) to jump-start a series that blends dystopian sci-fi and horror. A quarter of New York City, for example, is called the Levels after being bombed flat. The magic that characters use is less like that found in the Harry Potter series and more like the superpowers in the X-Men comics. Ebony is a riveting heroine who loves reading and her best friend, Maggy. Ebony’s also hopeful that her cruel father might someday stop treating her like an experiment. She describes a Jane Austen novel with blunt lyricism, thinking: “It was a crazy world about a woman fighting love. There was no magic, no technology, and loving parents. A world she could not relate to.” Bochnak unspools a disturbing plot slowly, for Daniel has much to hide, and even characters who die don’t leave the story too quickly.
A studiously chilling post-apocalyptic tale.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-948169-01-1
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Mad Goat Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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