An unreliable narrator, but with all his charm and knack for stumbling upon adventures, readers won’t mind.
Drachman’s (The Ghosts of Watt O’ Hugh, 2012) time-traveling hero returns for retribution against the man responsible for the death of his beloved.
When Hester Smith comes banging at his door, Watt O’Hugh is a Time Roamer in hiding, wanted for a crime he didn’t commit. Men are pursuing Hester, and it seems her encounter with Watt is not by chance: His ghosts—their “lives violently ripped from them back in 1863”—are needed to help rob a train and also stop a destructive social movement courtesy of the Sidonians. But what’s in it for Watt? The chance to kill Darryl Fawley, the Sidonian leader responsible for the death of Watt’s love, Lucy. Drachman’s exuberant novel is chock-full of fantastical elements; in addition to Watt’s time-roaming ability and spectral allies (often called “deadlings”), there are demons, oracles, dragons and assorted monstrosities. Appearances of such creatures are sometimes played for laughs, as when a city leader reluctant to join the movement is eaten by a “ferocious pond monster,” thereby persuading the next man in line to be a willing participant. Though the novel, set mostly in 1878 and told through flashbacks by an elderly Watt in 1936, professes to be Watt’s memoir, it more closely resembles a standard narrative, with lengthy accounts of fellow Roamer Master Yu presented in third-person, prior to his meeting Watt. Watt unambiguously labels Fawley and another Sidonian head, Allen Jerome, as villains, and he occasionally dilutes his first-person perspective by rushing through specifics, like the teased train robbery, which regrettably is given only highlights. But as an omniscient narrator, even if he has to rely on conjecture, Watt shines, especially in scenes with Yu, who walks the streets of 19th-century Chinatown in San Francisco, sometimes roaming and sidestepping passing cars. Drachman takes full advantage of his historical setting—Watt’s adversary, outwardly aligned in the fight against Sidonia, is J.P. Morgan—and has endless fun with character names: Morgan repeatedly, perhaps intentionally butchers Watt’s handle, including “Walt Hugbert” and “Hugglebuggle.” And Master Yu’s full name is the rather unfortunate Yu Dai-Yung.
An unreliable narrator, but with all his charm and knack for stumbling upon adventures, readers won’t mind.Pub Date: May 20, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Chickadee Prince Books
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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