An often baffling tale, but its protagonist’s wry commentary is undeniably entertaining.
In Dash’s (Sunburn, 2015, etc.) sci-fi outing, a man finds himself in a bizarre city filled with emotionless, robotic drones and people with fluctuating memories.
Londoner Newman Riplan, who troubleshoots computers, is in Amsterdam for work. It’s a relatively simple gig, but he takes his time so that he can stay overnight and party with Hughie and Battles, old friends whom he hasn’t seen in a couple of years. After the trio drinks, smokes, and snorts to excess, Hughie convinces Riplan that he’s due for a vacation and even buys him a plane ticket to a surprise destination. A fairly uneventful flight, however, takes an eerie turn when a confused Riplan suddenly has the feeling that he’s the only living soul on the plane—everyone else seems to have turned into mannequins. After the plane lands, he gets no clarification as to his whereabouts; when he asks the people around him, they respond: “Where do you think you are?” He enters a nameless city populated by drones—humanlike automatons that initially don’t seem to serve a purpose. Neither are the humans very accommodating, and they’re unfamiliar with even basic amenities, such as glass or electricity. Apparently someone called “the Alchemist,” of whom little is known, provides the people with what they need. Riplan believes that if he can just meet this man, he can find a way out of the city and back home. Dash’s surreal tale has its share of unsettling moments; two of the most disturbing entail Riplan learning what type of currency the city dwellers use and the origin of their preferred drink. There’s also an abundance of intriguing peculiarities, from beasts that run amok when the moon turns crimson to men who do a nightly task when everyone’s asleep. Readers shouldn’t expect many answers, though, as the city’s inhabitants have spotty recollections of their pasts. As a result, the novel is a dizzying affair, but Dash grounds the story with Riplan’s genuine connection to a woman he meets, named Cheryl. The author also provides moments of humor; Riplan gets a job in the city as a teller of tales, which he pulls from books and movies and claims as his own. The ending, though predictable, doesn’t disappoint, as it offers resolution while also leaving a lot to interpretation.
An often baffling tale, but its protagonist’s wry commentary is undeniably entertaining.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5396-2866-8
Page Count: 310
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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