A briskly paced, action-packed suspense novel featuring two heroes who take on the world.
A political thriller that pits a disgraced serviceman and a political rebel against a corrupt government administration.
In Michael’s (Fire War III: Uprising, 2016, etc.) rousing, densely plotted thrill ride, prideful U.S. Navy Capt. Kelvin Hanson, at the helm of the USS Brandyn, suddenly experiences a crisis of conscience when he defies a superior’s direct order to destroy another seafaring vessel that’s supposedly harboring a terrorist leader. His initial hesitancy and subsequent refusal to comply result in a dishonorable discharge from the armed forces even though, at a subsequent trial, it’s found that the targeted ship was not, in fact, a threat. But Hanson, who’s lost his livelihood and his true passion in life, can’t allow the issue to drop. Determined to uncover the truth behind the misguided executive order that sunk his career (as well as an innocent vessel), he teams up with Ashlee Townsend, the ultraliberal head of the Freedom Group, a government watchdog agency dedicated to monitoring political activity and holding those in power accountable for their actions. Her present focus is on U.S. President Diego Silva: “despite promises of lowering carbon emissions and better healthcare and all kinds of things, things that she herself believed deeply in, there was something wrong,” she thinks. Believing Silva was “not all he was set up to be,” Townsend follows her intuition and sets out to discredit him—but then she learns of Hanson’s troubles and decides to dig into the secrets behind them instead. The author cleverly reveals early on that the president is indeed a conniving, corrupt politician with key government players in his pocket—a man who crushes those people who dare challenge his authority. But there are even more nefarious villains in this tale for the main characters to encounter. Together, Hanson and Townsend investigate the details of the naval incident, including who was actually aboard the civilian ship, and pool their discoveries with the dirt that Hanson’s wife, Kishanna, has managed to dig up on President Silva. (She’s a dogged, hard-nosed Washington Post journalist with a score to settle against unscrupulous government operatives.) But as Hanson gets more and more desperate, a violent twist brings even more mystery, intrigue, and lethal danger into the mix. A military dictatorship attempts to assume control of the country, California secedes from the Union, and imminent war and a looming assassination plot galvanize Hanson and Townsend to spearhead a revolution and save the country from ruin. Michael delivers an ambitious, fast-paced plot and a well-drawn, compelling cast of supporting characters that includes Silva’s doting wife, Min-Seo, whose inside knowledge of her husband’s machinations could prove fatal. Headliners Hanson and Townsend, meanwhile, are intelligent, unstoppable, and wonderfully relatable characters with good hearts and adventurous minds. Readers will recognize many of the novel’s themes and character motivations in today’s real-life political climate. The book’s mysteries are dutifully solved by the heart-stopping conclusion, but readers may hope for potential future installments.
A briskly paced, action-packed suspense novel featuring two heroes who take on the world.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-979856-54-6
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Todd M. Thiede and Associates, LTD
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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
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