An enticing tale and an effective introduction to an expansive fictional world.
In Arriaza’s supernatural debut novel, a doctor aids a wounded stranger who shows up on her property and then faces a wave of otherworldly creatures.
Dr. Melisa Castro plans to spend her vacation in bed with Chris Kosmatka, her fiance and the father of her son-to-be. But while she waits for Chris to return from work, someone else drops by—a man who rolls down a hill, right into her LA backyard. As she tends to him, she’s shocked by his large, open, but bloodless chest wound, and when she touches it, she has a vision of the man restrained and someone stabbing him. Elsewhere in the city, the enigmatic Ranald, who perpetually wears a leather jacket and sunglasses, is trying to track down a stolen dagger. The blade had the power to kill a powerful individual known as the Hunter, whose now-missing body was its last resting place. The Hunter could also be linked to vicious animal attacks that cops (including Melisa’s brother, Walter) are investigating. As her visions continue, Melisa also learns that she’s marrying into a family that hides a dark secret. Arriaza’s entertaining tale features a few traditional supernatural beings that readers will recognize, but he employs their familiarity to the story’s advantage, simplifying the plot by cutting down on unnecessary back story. This helps the book maintain a steady momentum, particularly in the brisk final act, which is filled with inevitable confrontations. The real highlights, however, are the characters’ constantly shifting alliances. Some of the descriptions are repetitive (the word “massive,” for instance, is used too often), but they detail the action in concise, clipped sentences: “She can see his eyes. Beautiful blue eyes. He is screaming something; she can’t understand it.” Much of the explanation of what’s really going on, including ties to religion, is reserved for the end, and it’s coherent while also leaving plenty to explore in future planned volumes.
An enticing tale and an effective introduction to an expansive fictional world.Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9987933-0-6
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Rio Dulce Books
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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