This brief but powerful dragon story soars.
In McCandless’ (The Krottkey Chronicles, 2013) novella, a young Texas girl of today must fight a terrifying dragon.
Since she witnessed the death of her father two years ago in a freak accident, 12-year-old Beatrice McIlvaine has been the glue that holds her family together. Now, besides juggling cooking, laundry, and school, Beatrice becomes aware that her dreams of a dragon are not just dreams, but warnings. Fortunately, Mrs. Knowles, a mysterious substitute teacher at Beatrice’s school, knows all about the basilisk, and she’s able to supply Beatrice with whatever weapons she wants to fight the creature. Astride the legendary winged horse Pegasus and armed with King Arthur’s magical sword, Excalibur, Beatrice ascends into the night sky to fight the fearsome beast. Though ostensibly about fighting a dragon, this brief, multilayered novella also depicts the power of perseverance, the strength of family, and a young person’s ability to believe in magic even after witnessing a horrible life experience. Beatrice and her younger brother, Frank, who is constantly searching for buried pirate treasure, represent the hope that wondrous things can happen in life, a notion that adults—as represented by their mother, Anne, who works a backbreaking schedule just to keep the family afloat—have long since abandoned. Beatrice, on the other hand, simply accepts that the dragon is real and implicitly trusts Mrs. Knowles, who somehow knows all about the monster. McCandless is a descriptive writer: “The soul eater lived on an island deep in the southern seas, where red fruit rotted on sagging branches and night drew a curtain of bats across the sky. The rusty frame of an old prop plane—a Lockheed electra 10E, from the looks of it—lay like a broken crucifix in the forest on the island’s north side.” Unfortunately, the story ends just as it draws readers in—perhaps not a bad thing when battling a basilisk.
This brief but powerful dragon story soars.Pub Date: April 23, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-615-60901-0
Page Count: 66
Publisher: Ninth Planet
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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