An engaging, complex introduction to a charming supernatural series.
Time-traveling carnies, malevolent spirits, and a triple homicide rock a small Midwestern town in the first volume of Ernst and Sigafus’ (Native Elders: Sharing Their Wisdom, 2014) Mida series.
Nobody in Farmingdale, Iowa, knows who booked the carnival, but one foggy October night in 1952, its tents and rides just appear. The carnies are strangers to everyone, except for beloved townsperson Nola. Years ago, her late son, John, founded the carnival as “a refuge for those who were a little different.” Eight of the carnies, known as “the gifted,” possess mystical powers—such as telekinesis and the ability to communicate with the souls of animals—which are at their strongest when the group works together. After John’s mysterious murder, his wife, Mesa, took charge of the carnival and left Nola to raise their son, Tony. He grew up believing that Mesa was dead. Now a short-tempered young man, he spends his days drinking and fighting with his girlfriend, Joanie; when she also winds up dead, alongside another local and his dog, Sheriff Sam Johnston considers Tony the main suspect in the crime. Mesa, striving to make up for lost time with her son, rallies her carnies to join forces and clear his name. However, it isn’t the only issue the carnies must face: there’s also the evil spirit Jiibay, who’s enlisted one of the carnival’s members in a bid to control the group’s powers for his own wicked ends. There are also matters of the heart; the sheriff can’t resist Mesa’s gardenia scent, and 7-foot-tall Stretch pines for “Cajun Wiccan” dancer Carlotta, known among her friends as “one tough cookie.” (That doesn’t deter Stretch, though, who says that “[s]ome cookies have soft centers”.) Even with so many narrative elements at play, including copious supporting characters, Ernst and Sigafus’ clean prose makes the story easy to follow. By the novel’s end, the murder mystery storyline eventually arrives at an underwhelming conclusion, while the Jiibay plotline reaches an outlandish one. That said, the book’s true engine—the relationships among the carnies—remains affecting all the way through. This is particularly true regarding the interplay between Mesa and Connor, a fortuneteller who never leaves her side.
An engaging, complex introduction to a charming supernatural series.Pub Date: March 1, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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