An oceangoing SF/techno-thriller made especially seaworthy by its depth, not just its depth charges.
In Marsh’s future-set novel, tough, freedom-loving, and eco-minded sailors patrol Earth’s seas against greedy, corrupt empires.
SF/fantasy author Marsh envisions a late-21st-century future in which, following a second American civil war (which ended mysteriously and inconclusively), a large number of environmentalists and democracy lovers flee the greedy, corrupt United States—basically a vassal of Russia—to form the Mariners, a seagoing, island-centered nation-state. Mariners, aka “shipsies,” are considered rogues, occupying much of the Pacific with their ragtag, resourceful navy. They have cleansed their waters of plastic and maintained sustainable sea life (even saving the whales) but face incursions from mammoth fossil fuel container ships and voracious fishing fleets. Then from the treacherous USA comes a surprise envoy, Congressman Arnold Drummond, claiming to want a peaceful mission, in cooperation with a U.S. Navy warship, to investigate a mysterious, sunken complex. The site is rumored to hold advanced, perhaps apocalyptic, weapons cached before the war, and coordinates have already leaked to the criminal underworld. Navigator Kara Nkosi, adopted into Mariner society as a human-trafficked little girl and now a fierce defender of its values, distrusts the Americans but finds herself in dangerous straits as the recovery mission involves powerful entities. Marsh’s believable worldbuilding only improves this climate-changed dystopia. The well-conceived Greenpeace-with-guts heroes make compelling characters. The cli-fi aspects aren’t overdone and neither are the cyberpunk trappings of enhanced humans. Pages turn faster than a propeller when it’s time for battle stations, and action comes on brisk and fiery. Belowdecks, though, lies genuine conviction about this slightly altered tomorrow—a place where morally bankrupt corporate states rule like pirate kings and a major holiday is “Putin Day.”
An oceangoing SF/techno-thriller made especially seaworthy by its depth, not just its depth charges.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-938190-72-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: Brick Cave Media
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
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
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.
A vampire and an Alpha werewolf enter into a marriage of convenience in order to ease tensions between their species.
As the only daughter of a prominent Vampyre councilman, Misery Lark has grown accustomed to playing the role that’s demanded of her—and now, her father is ordering her to be part of yet another truce agreement. In an effort to maintain goodwill between the Vampyres and their longtime nemeses the Weres, Misery must wed their Alpha, Lowe Moreland. But it turns out that Misery has her own motivations for agreeing to this political marriage, including finding answers about what happened to her best friend, who went missing after setting up a meeting in Were territory. Isolated from her kind and surrounded on all sides by the enemy after the wedding, Misery refuses to let herself forget about her real mission. It doesn’t matter that Lowe is one of the most confounding and intense people she’s ever met, or that the connection building between them doesn’t feel like one born entirely of convenience. There’s also the possibility that Lowe may already have a Were mate of his own, but in spite of their biological differences, they may turn out to be the missing piece in each other’s lives. While this is Hazelwood’s first paranormal romance, and the book does lean on some hallmark tropes of the genre, the contemporary setting lends itself to the author’s trademark humor and makes the political plot more easily digestible. Misery and Lowe’s slow-burn romance is appealing enough that readers will readily devour every moment between them and hunger to return to them whenever the story diverts from their scenes together.
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593550403
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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