A strong sci-fi double bill from a talented new writer.
In two novellas, Pryce (Unnatural Selection, 2012) depicts a reluctant human soldier marooned during an interplanetary war and a recovering addict abducted by members of a bizarre alien species.
The first novella, War Torn, is combat-oriented sci-fi with a soft center. It describes a future conflict between earthlings and the Phraaks, a vaguely birdlike extraterrestrial race, which began as a minor trade dispute but has turned into the military-industrial-social linchpin of human society. Medic Nathan Bhat enlisted for revenge after his wife died in a Phraak attack. Now he regrets it, as he’s the one non–hard-ass in a squad of genetically enhanced soldiers conditioned to react with directed violence. The squad gets shot down on a mystery world, where they’re pursued by a Phraak warship full of troops. Bhat is the only human with enough of his wits about him to perceive that the planet itself responds lethally to any display of belligerence. The second novella, Bad Trip, features a recovering heroin addict, Sarah, who’s married to the man who saved her from suicide, New York City cop Ryan. After a suicide attempt, Sarah is mysteriously teleported to the ghastly feeding grounds of aliens in another solar system, where she witnesses them using assorted humanoid species as livestock. As Ryan tries to figure out clues to her whereabouts, Sarah fights the narcotic that keeps her and the other captives docile. It would have been fabulous if these two novellas were printed back-to-back in the tradition of the cherished Ace Double sci-fi paperbacks of yesteryear, for both yarns merit attention from that genre’s followers. (The collection also includes two other, minor pieces: a short story billed as a preview of a future property and a self-promoting gag done for a flash-fiction contest.) Pryce’s considerable talents of description, characterization, and pacing, previously showcased in Unnatural Selection, burnish this collection. Both of the novellas’ stories might have been obvious and leaden in lesser hands, but Pryce keeps the jolts and twists neatly on target in both. That said, a few of the author’s choices of pop-culture references and phrases (such as “tippy toes”) seem odd in such nightmarish circumstances.
A strong sci-fi double bill from a talented new writer.Pub Date: July 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9846691-2-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Cenozoic Publishing, Incorporated
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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