A skillfully rendered account of superpowers locked in covert war.
In this political thriller, the United States races to thwart a massive cyberattack from China.
A letter thrown into a U.S. Consulate vehicle reveals that covert cyberoperations were conducted against the U.S. secretary of state by the Chinese government and that other attacks, on an even greater scale, are soon to follow. Because Logan Alexander is already in Hong Kong—he is the head of a legitimate consulting firm that also functions as a front for the CIA—he’s tasked with making contact with the letter’s author, Li Jiang. Li is a senior officer in the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, privy to sensitive information regarding China’s designs. He reveals to Logan that China, recognizing that it is no match for the United States from the perspective of conventional warfare, has turned its sights to other means of regaining dominance in Asia and the world at large. To that end, it plans a massive Zero Day assault on the American financial system, with the hope of undermining international confidence in the United Sates. When Li is asked what precisely is China’s ultimate objective, he responds concisely: “Nothing less than China replacing the U.S. as the number one economy in the world.” Logan, a former Navy SEAL whose military career was cut short by an injury sustained in combat, must not only determine Li’s trustworthiness, but also contend with traitors within his own ranks. Author Williams (Cooper’s Revenge, 2013, etc.) is a former operations officer for the CIA, and his professional background is evidenced by the expert account he provides of labyrinthine American and Chinese intelligence services. The author also constructs believable characters: Li’s treason is partly the result of his father’s betrayal by a corrupt Communist Party. The plot races at breakneck speed and artfully combines grand geopolitical drama with political plausibility. There is no shortage of bureaucratic and technological complexity, and readers looking for a breezy adventure story might find the details daunting. But Williams has produced a believable, timely tale brimming with cinematic power.
A skillfully rendered account of superpowers locked in covert war.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9884400-6-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: First Coast Publishers, LLC
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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