It’s a pity: This might have been a truly exemplary thriller.
A runaway wildfire tests the mettle and reawakens the spirits of a battle-scarred firefighter in the Canadian author’s latest (The Trade Mission, 2002, etc.).
Four-fifths of a very good novel, this begins splendidly, with an incrementally detailed picture of hard lives in the Yukon wilderness (300 miles south of the Arctic Circle) in the remote town of Ross River (“We’re the shit end of the stick out here”). It’s a tough town indeed, where fire chief Miles McEwan (who bears disfiguring facial and bodily scars from old burns, along with equally painful memories) commands a hard-drinking crew of phlegmatically heroic firemen; wrestles with the aftereffects of an affair with hunting guide Margot Lemontagne and the hatred of her embittered current lover, Wade Fuerst; and wonders how to react to the unexpected reappearance of Alex, the woman whom he had loved and left before Margot, and the young daughter (Rachel) whose existence comes as a complete surprise to him. Pyper explores their intensifying interrelationships skillfully, filling in explanatory details with precisely timed flashbacks, and disclosing actions from the viewpoints of numerous involved souls, including all the aforementioned characters, the elderly couple who engage Margot’s services and—quite imaginatively—a female grizzly bear who loses her cubs to humans and becomes, as much as does the spreading fire which provides the central plot, the incarnation of an embattled natural world patiently, implacably seeking its revenge. Two grievous miscalculations all but ruin the novel. Brief sequences shown from the viewpoint of an unidentified arsonist are never brought to resolution, and an overly melodramatic chain of coincidental climaxes drains away much of the credibility built up by the story’s rich specificity. The ending toward which Pyper shapes his story is simply not believable.
It’s a pity: This might have been a truly exemplary thriller.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-35454-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2006
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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