An exciting paranormal action tale, notwithstanding its excessive plot summaries.
In the third installment of Menear’s (Poseidon’s Sword, 2015, etc.) thriller series, an airline pilot is the key to activating a weapon with the potential to destroy much of the world.
After Samantha Starr discovered an artifact in a curio shop in Hong Kong, she became caught in the middle of a race between various groups to find a powerful weapon called Poseidon’s sword. Sam’s artifact is a prototype of the larger weapon, and it seems that only she can activate both versions. This makes her a target for abduction by arms dealer Lord Sweetwater, as well as by members of the Black Sun, a nefarious cult that may not be as dead as Sam thought. Fortunately, Sam is aided by the British Special Air Service, including her boyfriend, Capt. Ross Sinclair, and the U.S. Navy, in which her twin brothers, Mike and Matt Starr, are lieutenants. Meanwhile, three sisters, Blaze, Luna, and Solraya, raised as goddesses for 23 years in the Himalayas by their captors from ancient Atlantis, have a telepathic connection to Sam. Many people believe she’s the Golden Twin, prophesied to locate and use Poseidon’s Sword. This would likely decimate a large part of Earth, and if the Atlanteans have their way, they’ll use the weapon to rule the world. Menear pulls readers into a story in progress: Sam has already been dodging bad guys for a while in previous installments, when she wasn’t being kidnapped and/or tortured by them. But those just joining the series with this book won’t feel lost, thanks to numerous recaps via dialogue or Sam’s first-person narration. These summaries also prove somewhat detrimental, however, as characters repeatedly explain what’s going on. The protagonist still manages to shine, though; she gains sympathy by proving to be more concerned about a fellow abductee than herself, and she’s unquestionably formidable as a taekwondo expert. The novel’s exhilarating second half features intense battles with a giant sea creature, as well as the eventual appearance of Atlantean assassins. A stellar final-act turn highlights the world-threatening danger.
An exciting paranormal action tale, notwithstanding its excessive plot summaries.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Black Stallion Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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