Readers should hardly notice the novel’s epic length, breezing through laudable characters and a global plot running at full...
In this military thriller, a coup in North Korea begets civil war, which, given the country’s chemical and nuclear weapons, could have worldwide repercussions.
The apparent redeployment of North Korean troops from the Demilitarized Zone surprises South Korean and American officers alike. They rightly surmise that a coup is under way against Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. Kim’s initially rumored assassination becomes a reality when millions who tuned in to the leader’s televised announcement witness his death. The resultant fighting in North Korea is between three factions: the Kim family, the Korean Workers’ Party, and the military. But other nations especially worry about North Korea’s “nuclear stockpile.” South Korea sends army units to secure the area by tackling the North’s nuclear facilities and chemical-weapons depots. North Korean civilians trying to escape via the country’s border with China, meanwhile, are getting shot by Chinese soldiers stationed there. Camps set up for the refugees are quickly overwhelmed by the staggering number of people who need food and water. China, like everyone else, is apprehensive about Kim’s armaments. The country decides to march troops into North Korea to find and destroy the nuclear weapons on its own. But an altercation between China and South Korea/U.S. allies is feasible and might spark a war. This swiftly paced, 510-page novel is a sequel to Bond’s 1989 Red Phoenix (with Patrick Larkin). A beginning recap forgoes any necessity to read the previous book, though it’s a treat to see returning characters like Col. Kevin Little at the DMZ. There’s no real central character, giving the narrative an appropriate expansiveness among its Korean, American, Chinese, and even Russian characters. Hero status is shared, too, and standouts include Col. Rhee Han-gil, who leads a brigade covertly into North Korean territory, and Cho Ho-jin, a spy for the Russians who ultimately aligns with South Korea. Bond and Carlson (Lash-Up, 2015, etc.) bounce the story from scene to scene like a tightly edited action movie, an impressive tempo kick-started in the opening when Little’s immediately under fire trying to help potential defectors fleeing to South Korea.
Readers should hardly notice the novel’s epic length, breezing through laudable characters and a global plot running at full tilt.Pub Date: March 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5196-3538-9
Page Count: 510
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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