The Traveller - Softcover

Hawks, John Twelve

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593054318 ISBN 13: 9780593054314

Publisher: Bantam Press, 2005

Synopsis

In the shadows of our modern society, an ancient conflict between good and evil is being fought. A life-and-death battle we will never see, between those who wish to control history and those who will risk their lives for freedom and enlightenment...Los Angeles: A city where you have to work hard to live beneath the surface. Gabriel and Michael Corrigan are trying to do just that. Since childhood, the brothers have been shaped by the stories that their mystical father, a man of strange powers and intuition, has told them about the world in which they live. After his violent death, they have been living 'off the grid' - that is, invisible to the intricate surveillance networks that monitor our modern lives. London: Maya, a tough and feisty young woman, is playing at being a citizen, is playing at leading a normal life. But her background is anything but. Trained to fight since she was a young girl, she is the last in a long line whose duty is to protect the gifted among us. When she is summoned to Prague by her aillng father, she learns that Gabriel and Michael's lives are in danger and are in desperate need of protection. Prague: Nathan Boone, a disciplined and amoral mercenary, watches Maya leave the meeting with her father before brutally killing him. Tasked to hunt down the brothers, he tracks Maya as she seeks to fulfil what turns out to be her father's last command. When Maya flies to California to find them, an extraordinary chase begins, the final running battle in the war which will reveal the secret history of our time...

About this title

Review:

Sometimes--not very often--a debut novel comes along which marks out a new writer as a consummate craftsman, seemingly fully formed with that first book. The Traveller is such a book; the mysterious John Twelve Hawks is such a writer (his publishers give no information about him, except that he ‘lives off the grid’).

The first thing that strikes the reader about this unusual novel is its ambitious panoply, which is as exuberantly international as one could wish, moving through a vividly realised Prague, London and Los Angeles. His characters are disparate but characterised with great individuality, such as the brothers Gabriel and Michael Corrigan, who have been brought up in Los Angeles under the mesmerising spell of their fey father; he appears to possess certain unnatural powers. After he dies a violent death, the brothers vanish off the grid of society, living in a clandestine underworld. Meanwhile, in London, Maya is a self-possessed young woman whose everyday life conceals a strange secret: she is the last of a dynasty whose responsibility is to protect those in the human race who are differently gifted. She is called to Prague by her sick father, and learns about Gabriel and Michael, whose lives are now in serious danger. In California, a desperate race against time begins: who will track down the brothers first--the protective Maya or the murderous Boone?

Readers tired of the parochial thriller that has held sway in Britain for so long will embrace this intoxicating (if outrageously unlikely) novel with open arms. True, a certain suspension of disbelief is required, but Twelve Hawks is the kind of writer who is able to persuade even the most sceptical among us. A remarkable debut.
--Barry Forshaw

Review:

This novel s a stunner. . . . You won t want to put the book down. People
The stuff that first-rate high-tech paranoid-schizophrenic thrillers are made of. Time
A fearless, brilliant action heroine (think Uma Thurman in Kill Bill); a secret history of the world; a tale of brother against brother . . . and nonstop action as the forces of good and evil battle it out. . . . Readers won t regret taking this wild ride. The Times-Picayune
Gripping. . . . Fresh and fascinating. . . . Impossible to put down. Daily News "

"This novel's a stunner. . . . You won't want to put the book down." -People"The stuff that first-rate high-tech paranoid-schizophrenic thrillers are made of." -Time"A fearless, brilliant action heroine (think Uma Thurman in Kill Bill); a secret history of the world; a tale of brother against brother . . . and nonstop action as the forces of good and evil battle it out. . . . Readers won't regret taking this wild ride." -The Times-Picayune "Gripping. . . . Fresh and fascinating. . . . Impossible to put down."-Daily News

-This novel's a stunner. . . . You won't want to put the book down.- -People-The stuff that first-rate high-tech paranoid-schizophrenic thrillers are made of.- -Time-A fearless, brilliant action heroine (think Uma Thurman in Kill Bill); a secret history of the world; a tale of brother against brother . . . and nonstop action as the forces of good and evil battle it out. . . . Readers won't regret taking this wild ride.- -The Times-Picayune -Gripping. . . . Fresh and fascinating. . . . Impossible to put down.--Daily News

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0593054318
• ISBN 13: 9780593054314
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464