Another absorbing, entertaining entry in this one-of-a-kind SF series.
In this sequel, humanity remains controlled by three superstates, which come under attack from supernatural monsters.
In the author’s SF series opener (Kumori and the Lucky Cat, 2016), three powerful superstates arose after World War 3. In 2090, they find themselves opposed by statues, figurines, and dolls come to monstrous life. This second outing also includes events around 2090 but skips ahead to 2101 and backward to 2080. In 2101, a young lawyer from New Bangkok, the capital city of the Eurasia superstate, is sent to investigate irregularities at a detention camp, one of several built during the Reorganization to control people left in some “forbidden zones” considered dangerous, such as Japan. She finds a journal from 2090 noting the awakening of inanimate dolls and sculptures: “They are now more than just clay or stone or resin. Something else has entered them, using their empty forms to fight a secret war.” In 2090, Suna Hagiwara and her niece are resettled in New Bangkok, bringing with them a maneki-neko (beckoning cat statue), and Suna is drawn into the resistance Movement. Ten years before that, Suna’s sister, Yuki, is commissioned to make a special set of dolls. One of these, the Empress, enters the dreams of people in a sleep clinic that’s a front for the Movement, and Suna’s awakened maneki-neko promises to become clan guardian of the Hagiwaras. Gray (Magic Hair, 2019, etc.) has a nice control of the tone in these series installments, a delicate precision that helps balance the drama of dystopian fears and supernatural battles: “A barely whispered sigh so unearthly and gentle that it was almost imperceptible to human ears. Let this curse fall upon them.” Her characters are well developed and the worldbuilding feels solid. Things do still feel unresolved by the book’s ending, although the third volume may bring resolution. The jumps between time settings could become confusing, but the author helps readers out with an appended timeline as well as chapter headings with date and place to keep the audience oriented.
Another absorbing, entertaining entry in this one-of-a-kind SF series.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72637-555-9
Page Count: 213
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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