A worthy thriller starring a tireless and always-reliable protagonist.
In this fourth installment of a series, a graduate student/amateur spy aids in an archaeologist’s risky quest to locate a religious site filled with valuable relics.
Travis Weld, who works for a secret government agency, has enlisted Chesney Barrett’s help in the past. He’s also extensively trained the grad student, who’s doing environmental research in the Louisiana Atchafalaya Basin. Her latest task is liberating archaeologist David Phillips from a leftist guerrilla organization in Mexico. She succeeds, also saving Dr. Tanadas, director of Mayan archaeological studies, in the process. But her work isn’t finished: David’s father, Jacob, wants Chesney to join his son in his newest archaeological trek. She can ensure Tanadas doesn’t take credit for the discovery while protecting David from potential treasure hunters and rebels. David is searching for God’s Domain, the legendary—and presumably relic-filled—dwelling site of Viracocha, god over all gods and the people in the Americas. In a search that takes them to Peru, David and Chesney will have to make alliances with dangerous individuals, including artifact smuggler Col. Montez. But unknown to anyone, awaiting them at the sacred site is something entirely unexpected, as a formidable guardian turns David’s hunt into a test of survival. As in the preceding novels in Gallant’s (Rob the Vatican, 2007, etc.) thriller series, Chesney is a vigorous protagonist; she’s unquestionably the muscle in David’s expedition. But while the rescue mission opens the story with searing action, the pace then slows down significantly, as David deciphers hieroglyphs and decodes maps. Still, the search is often riddled with tension; Chesney must constantly remind David to keep quiet about details of God’s Domain, with suspect, greedy men populating the narrative. The latter half takes a rather surprising turn as the group nears the religious site, but it also presents Chesney with a new, seemingly unbeatable challenge. Meanwhile, her attraction to the appealing David rivals her lingering feelings for the emotionally distant Travis, but unfortunately the story doesn’t fully explore the romantic quandary.
A worthy thriller starring a tireless and always-reliable protagonist.Pub Date: June 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73229-774-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Bookmark Publications
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2018
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
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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