Cynicism and adult words stave off sappiness but don’t remotely dampen the magical story’s genuine charm.
In this fantasy debut, a wealthy but discontented businessman remembers his childhood journey through Chicago’s hidden, enchanted side with creatures and anthropomorphic animals.
Richard K. Lyons has become quite a success in the white-collar world as the “vice president of something.” But he’s far from happy, a philandering family man who dabbles too often in cocaine and alcohol and remains numbed by the stagnant workday routine. One Friday, Richard comes across a strangely familiar homeless girl, who plays him a song on the flute that apparently stirs up long-forgotten memories. As a boy, when he went by Rich, he encountered Francesca Finnegan, a girl who seemed to appear out of thin air. Francesca takes Rich on an otherworldly trek, starting with the Chicago “L” Lavender Line, a rapid-transit line Rich hasn’t heard of. The two head to the city’s largely unknown East Side, the only side not represented on Chicago’s flag. Rich’s surprised not only by the cat-headed conductor, but also the mythical beings aboard the train, from a giant Minotaur to a Cyclops. On their way to a ball at Aragon Castle, Rich and Francesca hear tales of the city’s “true history,” including slight variations on the Battle of Fort Dearborn and the Great Chicago Fire. Further adventures await, but will Richard’s recollections help him rediscover the boy he once was? Wiley renders his cheeky novel in the style of a children’s book, which he coats in satirical humor. Templeton Goodfellow, for example, is an elf decidedly uglier than elves as they’re often portrayed, with ratty hair and skin that looks its age of 10,000 years. Cihon’s illustrations follow suit: cartoonish Mr. Fox is endearing in his formal attire but clearly miserable standing in a snowstorm. Wiley, however, fills the pages with ethereal descriptions, such as alluding to Francesca’s curious “kaleidoscopic” hair and eyes, changing colors when she moves. There are just enough obscenities uttered to ensure this book is never shelved in the children’s or even YA section. The story, though, is anything but vulgar, a sweet and uplifting tale as heartwarming as the ones it’s poking fun at.
Cynicism and adult words stave off sappiness but don’t remotely dampen the magical story’s genuine charm.Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 177
Publisher: Lavender Line Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 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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