A vigorous, first-rate sequel.
Teenagers on a strange planet search for a way back to Earth while battling villainous slavers in this second installment of Gale’s (World of Dawn: Arise, 2017, etc.) YA sci-fi series.
In the previous book, set in 2017, 17-year-old Tanner; his friends Colby and Simon; and sisters, Anna and Tabby, got in a car accident and somehow found themselves on the World of Dawn. The new planet has its share of dangers, particularly giant creatures, such as horse-sized scorpions. But the group has fortunately made a few allies, such as Glooscap of the Sawnay people. He, Tanner, and all of the others are journeying to meet with the mysterious Women of the North, who may be able to help the teens get back to Earth. Then they receive a message from the Sawnay village, saying that a traitorous man named Cawop is manipulating the people into appointing him the new chief. As the group debates changing direction toward the village, they stumble upon some evil slavers attacking a band of nomads called the Denoon. Tanner and the others thwart the assault, but a slaver abducts one of Tanner’s friends and escapes, which precipitates a rescue mission. When it becomes clear that the slavers are plotting “to wipe out the Denoon,” Glooscap and the teens must decide to either move on or stay and fight. Gale’s boisterous series entry is brimming with danger; at one point, Tanner even discovers that the enigmatic One Who Sees All has put a bounty on him, personally. The teens—and readers—continue to learn more about the World of Dawn, encountering familiar mythological creatures and fellow Earthlings from past eras, including one man from the year 1070. Bloody action scenes abound, resulting in the death of a member of Tanner’s group. However, the author does occasionally offset the violence with humor; in one standout scene, for instance, Tanner faces a brutish slaver who’s listening to Michael Jackson’s 1982 song “Thriller” on an apparently stolen Sony Walkman. The novel ends with lingering questions and undeterred baddies, with an eye toward a future installment.
A vigorous, first-rate sequel.Pub Date: April 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5434-2521-5
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
