A top-notch paranormal adventure is supercharged by a far-fetched premise with unexpected verve, emotion, and thrills.
After the discovery of a mysterious map in Greenland, a tormented archaeology assistant and her allies fight a sinister cult trying to recover an ancient Egyptian secret.
A Hollywood screenwriter might pitch this paranormal adventure by Vick (A Phantom Walks Among Us, 2019, etc.) as the “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Meets Indiana Jones,” though heroine Limerick “Ricky” Crowe’s has body art that consists not of a dragon but of a Celtic triskelion, an ancient three-lobed mythological symbol. Ricky left her native Ireland with her sister and widowed mother after the death of her father and subsequently endured a traumatic adolescent rape-mutilation while growing up in troglodyte Alabama. Now an alcoholic introvert, Ricky finds solace in online gaming in her Chicago apartment and in archaeological fieldwork with a local institute. Then her sister Sasha disappears in tandem with a massacre, at a climatology outpost in Greenland, by armed raiders who struck the remote site after the discovery of an ancient map, seemingly of Egyptian origin. The doomed Sasha managed to send the map to Ricky and her research teammates, who are promptly targeted by a ruthless global cult. Elements of Irish folklore and the Old Testament fall into place in Ricky’s bewildered and angry but resourceful mind, and soon she and allies are on an international chase to recover an ancient Egyptian secret of life and death. Escapist beach reads such as Clive Cussler’s Sahara and Iris Johansen’s Storm Cycle have jeep-driven down similarly dusty, artifact-strewn paths, but here the supernatural—not just lost wisdom, treasure, or technology—lies at the center of a conspiracy that has bad guys a step ahead of the heroes and cliffhangers that involve literally hanging from cliffs. Vick keeps his heroine credibly flawed during hideous ordeals and drops surprise after surprise until the end. Lucky encounters with occult-hieroglyphics interpreters in back alleys may be a bit much. But a grand spirit of master storytelling hangs over the novel, and readers will be glad to go along for the ride.
A top-notch paranormal adventure is supercharged by a far-fetched premise with unexpected verve, emotion, and thrills.Pub Date: April 28, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-957851-02-0
Page Count: 474
Publisher: Penmore Press LLC
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.
The master of supernatural disaster returns with four horror-laced novellas.
The protagonist of the title story, Holly Gibney, is by King’s own admission one of his most beloved characters, a “quirky walk-on” who quickly found herself at the center of some very unpleasant goings-on in End of Watch, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider. The insect-licious proceedings of the last are revisited, most yuckily, while some of King’s favorite conceits turn up: What happens if the dead are never really dead but instead show up generation after generation, occupying different bodies but most certainly exercising their same old mean-spirited voodoo? It won’t please TV journalists to know that the shape-shifting bad guys in that title story just happen to be on-the-ground reporters who turn up at very ugly disasters—and even cause them, albeit many decades apart. Think Jack Torrance in that photo at the end of The Shining, and you’ve got the general idea. “Only a coincidence, Holly thinks, but a chill shivers through her just the same,” King writes, “and once again she thinks of how there may be forces in this world moving people as they will, like men (and women) on a chessboard.” In the careful-what-you-wish-for department, Rat is one of those meta-referential things King enjoys: There are the usual hallucinatory doings, a destiny-altering rodent, and of course a writer protagonist who makes a deal with the devil for success that he thinks will outsmart the fates. No such luck, of course. Perhaps the most troubling story is the first, which may cause iPhone owners to rethink their purchases. King has gone a far piece from the killer clowns and vampires of old, with his monsters and monstrosities taking on far more quotidian forms—which makes them all the scarier.
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.Pub Date: April 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3797-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.
A disturbing household secret has far-reaching consequences in this dark, unusual ghost story.
Mallory Quinn, fresh out of rehab and recovering from a recent tragedy, has taken a job as a nanny for an affluent couple living in the upscale suburb of Spring Brook, New Jersey, when a series of strange events start to make her (and her employers) question her own sanity. Teddy, the precocious and shy 5-year-old boy she's charged with watching, seems to be haunted by a ghost who channels his body to draw pictures that are far too complex and well formed for such a young child. At first, these drawings are rather typical: rabbits, hot air balloons, trees. But then the illustrations take a dark turn, showcasing the details of a gruesome murder; the inclusion of the drawings, which start out as stick figures and grow increasingly more disturbing and sophisticated, brings the reader right into the story. With the help of an attractive young gardener and a psychic neighbor and using only the drawings as clues, Mallory must solve the mystery of the house's grizzly past before it's too late. Rekulak does a great job with character development: Mallory, who narrates in the first person, has an engaging voice; the Maxwells' slightly overbearing parenting style and passive-aggressive quips feel very familiar; and Teddy is so three-dimensional that he sometimes feels like a real child.
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-81934-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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