Unassuming yet powerhouse attorney Jennifer Walters and her secret alter ego, the publicity-loving She-Hulk, must learn to coexist and balance their physical and intellectual skills while fighting crime and injustice in the courtroom and on the streets, and possibly reclaiming the love of Jennifer’s life.
On the first day of the year, Jennifer prepares a list of Valentine’s Day Resolutions (New Year’s Resolutions being too cliché and statistically difficult) in order to conquer the fact that she has no job, no home and is persona non grata within her Avengers community, thanks to raucous She-Hulk. As a world-class attorney, she finds a job pretty quickly, taking on an inventor who’s allegedly created a faulty product that is killing people. Unfortunately, the senior partner of her new firm is the father of Ellis, the man Jennifer hooked up with years ago and has never forgotten; and the man accused of unleashing the faulty product is Ellis’ best friend. If that isn’t enough, Jennifer is supposed to submit to counseling when it’s She-Hulk who has the problem, and who has time for that when she’s litigating a high-profile case with her brand new job? Oh, and one of the attorneys she’s supposed to be working with is Ellis’ cold witch of a fiancee. Publisher Hyperion is staking a claim on a comic book–romance crossover market with popular Marvel characters, and She-Hulk (along with X-Men’s Rogue) is their first attempt to capture a comic-book sensibility in fiction form with a major romantic arc. Acosta has created an interesting and intriguing character study of the seemingly mismatched Jennifer and She-Hulk and has introduced a powerful past-love romantic storyline that somehow makes sense for both sides of the personality equation. It’s not clear how close to traditional canon the characters are and, therefore, how the purists of the comic-book universe will feel, but despite a few annoyances in the storyline (e.g. why would you not make a second call to the man you’re madly in love with?), it’s an engaging success.
A fun, escapist romantic romp with superheroes—who can resist?
Pub Date: June 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4013-1101-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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