An engaging fantasy whose romantic arc will likely divide readers.
This YA debut sees a teenager discover that a mythic destiny awaits in her parents’ homeland.
Eighteen-year-old Dorothy Dizon, a Filipino-American, lives in Las Vegas. She’s her class valedictorian at Valley High, a star basketball player, and indispensable to her mother, Meredith, who has liver cancer. Though her father seemingly abandoned the family years ago, Dorothy has embraced life to the utmost. Tonight she and her statuesque best friend, fellow Filipina Stella De Guzman, dance at the Tao Nightclub. When a middle-aged man gropes her, Dorothy uses taekwondo to pin him to the wall. She takes note not only of the strange craving in her throat, but also of the man’s exposed neck. The next day at school, Dorothy is dazzled by Adrian Rosario, a new Filipino exchange student. She has no idea that he’s a Danag—a vampire of Filipino lore who protects humans—from the Mandalagan area of Negros Island. As they grow acquainted, Dorothy is impressed by Adrian’s expertise in Filipino history, including his knowledge of the evil vampire Sitan and his duwende (goblin) minions. More shocking to Dorothy is that she has been giving off powerful signals, telling good and evil forces alike that she’s potentially descended from Urduja, the female warrior who saved Danag culture from the Mongols. For his fantasy series opener, Ursal provides a banquet of cultural textures about the Philippines without sacrificing a brisk pace and smooth prose. Adrian seems like the quintessential bad boy, sporting tattoos and driving a Mustang, yet he’s a Muslim who prays five times a day and understands that “we surrender time to Allah in exchange for safety and peace.” The fantasy elements (like Adrian’s glow) remain low key throughout much of the narrative, playfully recalling other series like Twilight. The author also mentions the tragedy of a vanishing culture, for while Adrian discusses Filipino lore, Dorothy thinks: “It would be a miracle if these stories would be remembered a hundred years from now.” Action heats up the finale, as does a love triangle that crudely elbows one protagonist out of the spotlight.
An engaging fantasy whose romantic arc will likely divide readers.Pub Date: March 14, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 347
Publisher: Pacific Boulevard Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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