A first novel that deserved hardcovers.
A prosperous beginning for San Francisco-based reporter and stage critic Moore.
In 1984, high-school sophomore Eric Sperling died during a car accident with his violently upset buddy Tom Linden at the wheel. Fifteen years later, in purgatory, Eric’s lonely ghost still hangs about Calaveras beach in South Los Angeles, trying to haunt Tom—who actually murdered Eric, who wants vengeance. Vengeance may consist of awakening Tom to the foulness of his deed in murdering his friend, although Tom has spent some years in jail for the death he caused while smashed out of his mind. Throughout the story, we know only that it happened in a car that struck the back end of a big truck. Eric has never seen another spirit like himself, although he’s become a spiritual Jewish being who studies in purgatory, in purgatory, in purgatory, a set of the 20-volume Zohar. In fact, he reads a lot in nearby libraries, and his tale illustrates an aspect of Jewish mysticism. He also has some physical abilities—to make floors creak, slam doors, even to float high over the beach. Back in their high-school days, Tom’s alcoholic father died by falling off a fishing boat and striking his head on the prop. Tom lives with his German-American mother and has been sucked into the violent mindset of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. He slips LSD into a teacher’s coffee and is later expelled for a year. Repellent though Tom is, Rachel falls for him and becomes his lover. Then Rachel accepts Eric as a lover as well, and when Tom finds out he kills Eric. While much of the story offers a big mix of secondary cultural figures, it turns on Tom’s character, his hardening in prison, his strange later life as he becomes his father, lies around stoned and drunk and shielded by booze from even seeing or hearing Eric until the unbearable moment comes when the dead boy appears before him.
A first novel that deserved hardcovers.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7867-1196-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.
The third installment of this fantasy series (The Bone Season, 2013; The Mime Order, 2015) expands the reaches of the fight against Scion far beyond London.
Paige Mahoney, though only 19, serves as the Underqueen of the Mime Order. She's the leader of the Unnatural community in London, a city serving under the ever more militaristic Scion, whose government is based on ridding the streets of "enemy" clairvoyants. But Paige knows the truth about Scion's roots—that an Unnatural and immortal race called the Rephaim, who come from the Netherworld, forced Scion into existence to gain control over the growing human clairvoyant community. Scion’s hatred of clairvoyants now runs so deep that Paige is forced to consider moving her entire syndicate into hiding while she aims to stop Scion's next attack: there are rumors that Senshield, a scanner able to detect certain levels of clairvoyance, is going portable. Which means no Unnatural citizen is safe—their safe houses, their back-alley routes, are all at risk of detection. Paige’s main enemy this time around is Hildred Vance, mastermind of Scion’s military branch, ScionIDE. Vance creates terror by anticipating her opponent’s next moves, so with each step that Paige and her team take to dismantle Senshield, Vance is hovering nearby to toy with Paige’s will. Luckily, Paige is never separated for long from her Rephaite ally, Warden, as his presence is grounding. But their growing relationship, strengthened by their connection to the spirit world, takes a back seat to the constant, fast-paced action. The mesmerizing qualities of this series—insight into the different orders of clairvoyance as well as the intricately imagined details of Paige’s “dreamwalking” gift, with which she is able to enter others’ minds—fade to the background as this seven-part series climbs to its highest point of tension. Shannon’s world begins to feel more generically dystopian, but as Paige fights to locate and understand the spiritual energy powering Senshield, it is never less than captivating.
A tantalizing, otherworldy adventure with imagination that burns like fire.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-624-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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