An imaginative and engrossing tale that’s full of drama, tension, and gripping what-if questions.
After preventing 9/11, time travelers must again change the past to alter the outcome of Wounded Knee in this SF sequel.
In Book 1, Maj. Kyle Mason—heartbroken after his beautiful, accomplished wife, Padma Mahajan, was killed in the 9/11 attacks—was recruited in 2008 for a very secret mission to go back in time and stop the strikes. But problems arose, and a desperate Kyle turned to the one reliable partner he could find in 2001: himself. Though successful, Kyle 2001 died in the process. Unable to leave Padma, Kyle 2008 stayed in 2001, becoming the reclusive “Anderson Wild.” By Timeline 002 2008, Padma has parlayed her financial genius and Kyle’s knowledge of coming events into a trillion-dollar fortune, all the political power she can buy, and control of the Time Tunnel underground research complex, called Dreamland. Meanwhile, Texas Sen. Jonah Jones gathers a private army and takes over the U.S. government, with Dreamland in his sights. Padma and Kyle must use the Time Tunnel to escape. Though they aim for San Francisco and the Summer of Love, they land in South Dakota, 1890, in a Lakota village—just a few months before the massacre of Wounded Knee, as Kyle realizes from his studies. Though Kyle and Padma agree they must prevent the massacre, complications—and unintended consequences—arise, with world-changing implications. In this second installment of a series, Todd (Time Tunnel: The Twin Towers, 2019) continues exploring the intriguing possibilities of time travel, backing up his speculations with well-researched history and believable science. Though adept at setting up exciting, tense confrontations, the author is also a thoughtful writer, and his characters are appropriately vulnerable, though Padma is hailed as the messiah of Lakota prophecy and Kyle has modern weaponry. Todd’s Lakota camp and the town of Deadwood come vividly alive with well-chosen, telling details such as the checkerboard that sits atop a general store’s cracker barrel. The cliffhanger ending will leave readers eager for the next volume.
An imaginative and engrossing tale that’s full of drama, tension, and gripping what-if questions.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73319-360-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
© 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.
