Rating: 
Summary: Help, I new a new Editor!
Review: As Homer Hickam makes his transition into the realm of fiction,
I hope that he will ask his Editor to pay more attention to detail, grammar, and punctuation. The sea saga chapters are excellent. It is when the story focuses on the romance between Josh and Josie Crossan that it seems as if the author can't wait to get back to sea. Josh meets Josie for the first time: "he came upon a young woman dressed in a checked shirt and khaki jodhpurs and high, brown leather boots". For the millions of horse people, and others with only a minimal experience with riding, jodhpurs are ankle-length riding pants worn with ankle-length jodphur boots. Riding breeches are shorter riding pants worn tucked into just below the knee leather boots. Jodphurs, for the most part, are worn by children. Grammatical errors and run-on sentences abound: p59 "No secrets on this island, is there?" (ouch). Or, this-p62 "Winks
would be exchanged, and all would go home for the weekend with the Maudie Janes prepared to rise the following Monday morning
and be at the boat at the required 6 a.m., ready to get out and patrol and rescue if it came to it". (huh?) I realize that St. Martin's Press is not Knopf, but good
Editors and Fact-checkers are in huge supply. The sea saga chapters are enjoyable, but not "beautifully
written and nerve-wrackingly suspenseful". The romantic chapters
are clumsily written and not plausible. I expected better from
Homer Hickam.
Rating: 
Summary: Mesmerizing
Review: For readers that could not make it through Torpedo Junction by Homer Hickam this book will tell in a more engaging fashion the same stories of German U-boats off the coast of North Carolina. While I thoroughly enjoyed Torpedo Junction I can understand that many could not get caught up with the real life characters in the book. With The Keeper's Son very few readers will not become attached to the intriguing characters unique to the North Carolina Outer Banks. It will be interesting to see how the next two installments fit into this story. With the story telling talents of Homer Hickam I feel confident that they will be successful and can't wait to read them. It would make a terrific movie.
Rating:
Summary: Another great story from Homer Hickam
Review: For readers that could not make it through Torpedo Junction by Homer Hickam this book will tell in a more engaging fashion the same stories of German U-boats off the coast of North Carolina. While I thoroughly enjoyed Torpedo Junction I can understand that many could not get caught up with the real life characters in the book. With The Keeper's Son very few readers will not become attached to the intriguing characters unique to the North Carolina Outer Banks. It will be interesting to see how the next two installments fit into this story. With the story telling talents of Homer Hickam I feel confident that they will be successful and can't wait to read them. It would make a terrific movie.
Rating:
Summary: Another pageturner from Hickam
Review: Hickam did it to me again. I was a little afraid that now that he's not writing about Coalwood he'd be like most authors who don't deliver when they change. But this was a great novel. He had me from the first page. I liked most of all the love between Josh and Dosie. Rex was a great character, too. A hollywood stunt man turned beach patrol horseman was fun to read about. I thought for awhile he and Dosie were going to be lovers too. I could really feel the desperation of the boys on both the Maudie Jane and the U-boat. Krebs and Max are interesting characters and I never imagined how it really was about a German sub. But most of all, I just liked being on Killakeet Island and getting to know the people of it and the way they lived. This should be a very successful series for Hickam. He deserves a lot of credit for leaving behind a franchise and blazing a path into a new series so unlike the other. But the writing still is powerful and that's what takes us along,sort of like Jacob in his boat!
Rating:
Summary: A novel worth your time
Review: I don't quite know how to describe Hickam's writing except that it kind of draws you in slowly but surely. His descriptions of the sea and life on the little island of Killakeet put you there. You feel the sand between your toes, the wind in your hair, can almost smell the salt air. As others have mentioned, his main characters Josh and Dosie and Otto and Miriam are so affecting. I want to know so much more about them yet Hickam made me feel as if I knew them. I wish I could have them in a room and just talk to them. I wept for poor Miriam and cheered Beach Patrol Dosie on. Although I don't usually like to read about war, the way Hickam handles those scenes made me realize how much they were part of the story. My husband will like this one for those scenes and I didn't mind them. The only complaint I might have is that the next in this series is a year or two away.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating from an EBB and now an HH fan
Review: I found it fascinating the way Hickam wrote this novel is four parts based on a stanza of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese. Parts: 1. Guess now who holds thee?
2. Death, I said.
3. But there the silver answer rang -
4. Not Death, but Love. Bravo, Mr. Hickam. Bravo.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent story telling
Review: I loved the "Coalwood Trilogy" for its story-telling and the author's character development. I was worried when he strayed from Coalwood that this would be lost. But this story was really good! After I got about a third of the way through, and things really started to happen, I had trouble putting it down! The relationship between Josh and Dosie is a strange one, but maybe that will play out better in the rest of the "Thurlow Trilogy". Mr. Hickam has an excellent grasp of life in a small town--as well as inside a submarine--and makes his characters very human. A must-read if you love great story telling and action! This will keep you guessing until the end!
Rating:
Summary: Going Home to the Outer Banks
Review: I read this wonderful book in one day! I've walked the beach, swam the waters, watched the waves and the sunsets on the Outer Banks, and Homer Hickam takes me back there with "The Keeper's Son." The irascible, independent islanders of Hickham's Killikeet are people who live on in my imagination, and that's the sign of a great writer - someone who creates characters so real you're sure they could be part of your life if only you could get inside the pages of a book. But Hickham has gone one better, he's given us a rousing tale of World War II and the courageous islanders who fought off German U-Boats that tried to cripple shipping along the eastern coast of the U.S. Sometimes a narrative gets choppy when an author jumps back and forth between two main characters' points of view, but not Hickam's. Both the sub captain and the Coast Guard ensign are men you come to respect and care about. Added to all this is a series of love stories, the love of brothers and of fathers and sons, the love of a man and a woman, the love of a community has for its own, both native and adopted. And wait, that's not all - Hickam has added a mystery that has you guessing until the very end - is the long lost son really lost or has he come home. Hickam has hinted this will be only the first in a series of books about his Killkeet Islanders and I can't wait to get back to them. This is one book (or series of books) I'll buy for myself and not just rely on the public library to supply me. In fact, I'll probably buy it for my daughter who spent a summer working for the National Park Service on Cape Lookout as a loggerhead turtle monitor. She's going to love it because it will mean going home to her too.
Rating:
Summary: Going Home to the Outer Banks
Review: I read this wonderful book in one day! I've walked the beach, swam the waters, watched the waves and the sunsets on the Outer Banks, and Homer Hickam takes me back there with "The Keeper's Son." The irascible, independent islanders of Hickham's Killikeet are people who live on in my imagination, and that's the sign of a great writer - someone who creates characters so real you're sure they could be part of your life if only you could get inside the pages of a book. But Hickham has gone one better, he's given us a rousing tale of World War II and the courageous islanders who fought off German U-Boats that tried to cripple shipping along the eastern coast of the U.S. Sometimes a narrative gets choppy when an author jumps back and forth between two main characters' points of view, but not Hickam's. Both the sub captain and the Coast Guard ensign are men you come to respect and care about. Added to all this is a series of love stories, the love of brothers and of fathers and sons, the love of a man and a woman, the love of a community has for its own, both native and adopted. And wait, that's not all - Hickam has added a mystery that has you guessing until the very end - is the long lost son really lost or has he come home. Hickam has hinted this will be only the first in a series of books about his Killkeet Islanders and I can't wait to get back to them. This is one book (or series of books) I'll buy for myself and not just rely on the public library to supply me. In fact, I'll probably buy it for my daughter who spent a summer working for the National Park Service on Cape Lookout as a loggerhead turtle monitor. She's going to love it because it will mean going home to her too.
Rating:
Summary: Loved this novel!
Review: I really loved this novel. Read it in two days, couldn't put it down. Set on the island of Killakeet of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the story instantly grabs you. Hickam sets it all up perfectly with the lost boy. I thought I knew where the story was going but instantly I was zapped forward 20 years and into a whole different story about Dosie and then Josh and it had me, too. Then Krebs and the U-boaters, that story captured me, too. But always the lost brother, the other keeper's son, in the background. It was like being caught in a tide you can't resist. The thing about Hickam as an author is that he never takes the easy obvious way. Here he is with a very successful memoir style writing about coal towns in Appalachia. He could have kept doing that, even writing fiction about it, but no, instead he embarks on a whole different set of stories. He is an author I will follow wherever he goes.
|
