by Stephen C. Sutcliffe ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 2002
An ambitious but awkwardly executed thriller.
In Sutcliffe’s debut novel, spoiled rich kids take nuclear Armageddon into their own hands.
Luther Michael Brethren loves his guitar. He’s in a band named Lybyrty and has speakers hanging from the trees in his absent parents’ backyard; he also has a bunch of friends who spend their time hang gliding, selling drugs and talking about the state of the world. The friends call themselves the Children of Atom and claim to have been warped by the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, an event none of them were alive to witness. When two of their acquaintances plan a plutonium heist, the four Children of Atom want in. They plan to use the plutonium to destroy an unlikely target—the small town of Titan—to “dispel delusions of peace and security everywhere.” They go on to raid a drug kingpin’s house to steal cocaine, which they plan to sell in order to buy some plutonium; later, they decide to steal the plutonium as well. Remarkably, the friends know exactly how to pull off a heist of this nature—all are firearms experts, and no one has any remorse about killing, except Michael, who is haunted by the death of the kingpin’s mistress. The novel spirals into farce when the isotope winds up stored in Michael’s house. Soon after, a freak storm occurs, causing all sorts of chaos, including the impalement of one of Michael’s friends and the destruction of Michael’s greenhouse where he had been clandestinely growing marijuana; Michael’s parents, supposedly in Europe for five more months, pick that moment to return home. Michael soon leaves everything behind and splits for Europe, as he doesn't want to be held accountable for the destruction The Children of Atom are about to unleash. The story struggles with stilted dialogue that has characters often pontificating instead of simply conversing. Readers may be confused by the novel’s inadequate scene-setting, which sometimes makes it difficult to understand what’s going on. Intermittent flashbacks and “interludes” further confuse the action, and, as a result, readers may find this short novel’s warring storylines hard to follow.
An ambitious but awkwardly executed thriller.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2002
ISBN: 978-0595216017
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Writer's Showcase Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
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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