Basically a video game in print. Exhausting.
With the sun’s evil twin headed straight for the Earth, our planet’s fate is in the balance, but ancient codes and monuments may hold the key for a way out of the seemingly inevitable intra-galactic smashup.
The age-, sex- and race-balanced team from Reilly’s 2006 thrill-a-second novel 7 Deadly Wonders returns, still under the management of handily bionic and super resourceful Australian Commando Jack West. West, who has a titanium left hand, has barely been able to catch his breath from the rigors of his most recent hyperadventures when his quiet time on the isolated ranch in Northern Australia with cute (and brilliant) adopted daughter Lily and her equally cute and brilliant little black chum Alby is interrupted by an invasion of parachuting Chinese soldiers itching to kill our hero and his little friends. The airborne Asian horde have orders to capture the golden capstone of the great pyramid at Giza, a little souvenir from West’s recent labors. After a hair-raising escape—the first of a steady stream of uninterrupted hair-raising escapes—Jack reunites with his action team on board his private and well-armed Boeing 747 and heads to the United Arab Emirates for a skull session to figure out why the world’s mega-powers want that pyramidal capstone. The capstone turns out to be just one of a half-dozen bits and pieces with historic ties to ancient empires which, when popped into just the right spot on just the right day, will give the holder fabulous power, wealth, skills and abilities while somehow averting the predestined collision of the Earth and that nasty black hole headed to Earth. Pursued at every step by ruthless teams of power-mad Chinese and Americans, including West’s nasty father, Jack, the gang race the clock to Stonehenge, Egypt, Rwanda and South Africa, decoding ancient clues and dodging cannibals and prehistoric booby traps to rescue Mankind from oblivion.
Basically a video game in print. Exhausting.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7432-7054-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
