A compelling premise that’s strengthened by solid scientific explanations, well-rounded characters, and nail-biting suspense.
A soldier travels back in time to prevent the 9/11 attacks and save his wife’s life in debut author Todd’s first sci-fi thriller in a duology.
On Sept. 10, 2001, Maj. Kyle Mason, a sandy-haired, green-eyed, and chiseled U.S. Army Special Forces soldier, can’t believe his luck: “He was newly wed to the most beautiful woman on the planet, and he was at the zenith of his career.” His 35-year-old wife, Padma Mahajan, a few years his senior, is the vice president of a Wall Street investment bank with offices in the World Trade Center. After the next day’s disastrous events, Kyle’s life is torn asunder; grief-stricken, he spirals downward into depression and resigns his commission. Then, in 2008, Gen. Aaron Craig asks him, “Major, what if you could change everything?” Kyle, reinstated as a lieutenant colonel, soon joins a secret research project in Nevada that’s been operating for decades. Scientists have constructed a time machine, and the project’s mission is to avert the 9/11 attacks by assassinating the hijackers before they can carry out their plan. Although Kyle and his partner, Col. Annika Wise, are highly prepared, they face unexpected difficulties on the mission, which takes a surprising turn. Todd grippingly conjures a what-if time-travel scenario that’s unusually believable. His time machine’s origin and development have a strong, plausible basis, and his characters’ backstories and personalities provide realistic motivations. The research project also makes a thorough case for choosing 9/11 as a vital historical inflection point—not only because of the attacks’ impact, but also because the activities and locations of the hijackers before the events are well known. As the main characters carry out their exciting mission and remake history, readers will find it intensely satisfying, and the cliffhanger ending promises new thrills to come.
A compelling premise that’s strengthened by solid scientific explanations, well-rounded characters, and nail-biting suspense.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-578-52240-1
Page Count: 410
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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