Ho-hum dialogue and shoddy world-building will turn off all but series fans (who will thrill to former McCaffery...
Alert for SF cat lovers: Acorna, the telepathic teen with the unicorn’s horn, rescues a planet of felines and warring humans, both menaced by a plague. In the McCaffrey franchise fifth volume, Acorna busies herself with repairing Vhiliinyar, the planet of the unicorn people who are Acorna’s ancestors. Vhiliinyar was almost destroyed by the bug-like Kleevi, but after the discovery of a subterranean city and its time machine (Acorna’s Search, 2002, etc.), it will be easier to restore its fragile ecological balance. Some loose ends remain: While Aari, Acorna’s heart-throb, has yet to emerge from the time machine, two Wats—crude unicorn-hunters urped up from the distant past—must be taken somewhere they won’t cause harm. Acorna agrees to accompany the Wats, with Starship Condor’s Captain Jonas Becker; the android MacKenZ; the female security guard Nadhari Kando; and the fiesty tomcat Roadkill to the planet Nirii, where telepathic inhabitants might help them adjust to life in the galactic Federation. But the ship founders and is rescued by a passing vessel that tows it to Makahomia, the homeworld of Nadhari and RoadKill. Populated by worshipped cats and warring humans, Makahomia is protected by the Federation: no new technologies may be introduced that will give any clan an advantage. Roadkill reveals that he sabotaged the ship in order to bring Acorna to Makahomia so that the seemingly magical powers of her horn could stop the plague that’s been killing cats. As the cats inexplicably get better, Acorna finds herself a target of evil forces that want to kill off both cats and humans so as to rob one of the planet’s religiously venerated natural resources. To save the world, Acorna must find a way break the Federation’s rules.
Ho-hum dialogue and shoddy world-building will turn off all but series fans (who will thrill to former McCaffery collaborator Margaret Ball’s tedious appendix about the fake language the characters speak) and cat-fantasy readers, who will adore the cloyingly cute passages about heroic felines.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-380-97899-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Eos/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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