An impressive cast headlines this remarkable futuristic tale.
A young man may be the only shot at stopping high-tech machines from destroying Earth in this debut SF novel.
San Francisco college student Fredrick Munchen has been seeing things—unexplained shadows visible even in dim light. He’s sure no one else can see these until he runs into a strange woman sporting a half-metal arm in an alleyway. It’s clear that she’s fully aware of the two “blurry smudges” flanking her. This encounter unnerves Fredrick, and he confides in fellow student and romantic interest Jillian Crenshaw. They’re equally determined to figure out what exactly is going on. Meanwhile, Opal Fremmitty, the woman from the alley, is a Mechanic who hails from the Griddish Realm. This faraway domed place is where many people oversee countless worlds, including Var 8, what Fredrick calls Earth. None of the “Varlings” on the individual worlds should be able to see the “shadowy” Négatrae, machines of both metal and flesh, with certain models used to deconstruct worlds. A Griddish manager, assuming Opal has done something wrong, sends someone to Var 8 to check out the man continually spotting these Négatrae. Fredrick and Jillian’s impromptu investigation surprisingly leads them to defectors from the Griddish Realm who are against a planned “dismantlement project.” The authoritative Commission has evidently decided that Var 8 could very well spread its chaos throughout the universe. As a dismantling could mean the end of Earth, Fredrick and Jillian undertake a perilous task—to somehow make their way to Griddish and sever the connection between that realm and their home planet.
In this engrossing series opener, AiBO painstakingly describes seemingly mundane acts. For example, Fredrick’s delivering a pizza includes everything from turning on the ignition and accelerating a motorcycle to cruising the streets. But these specifics are concise and never dull, and they allow for the narrative to linger on the environment. In one instance, Fredrick drives through the cold, dark night: “Police cars, their bright red and blue lights flashing, their buzzy sirens announcing their arrival, whooshed by, rushing towards unseen skirmishes and brawls.” Fredrick makes a superb reluctant hero who, though understandably shaken by inexplicable sights, stays levelheaded. His numerous scenes with Jillian are wonderful; despite his obvious attraction to her, the couple bond as friends, and it’s fun to watch her playfully interact with Fredrick (for example, she gives him an affectionate smack on the head). The two become immersed in a plot that’s initially confusing; even Opal’s narrative perspective doesn’t immediately clarify such things as “Slipshot Silos.” But readers learn a great deal before this story ends and catch more than a glimpse of Earth-like Griddish, its working locals, and what it entails to travel there. Sunada-Wong and Juarez’s crisp, comic book–style illustrations outfit characters with plentiful details, from nuanced facial expressions to suave attire. While much of the artwork involves the cast merely posing, two-page spreads with moments of action and serene backdrops are breathtaking. The final act reveals a major character’s possible death and introduces a new player, both providing crucial turns that open avenues for the sequel to explore. An impressive cast headlines this remarkable futuristic tale.Pub Date: March 1, 2023
ISBN: 9798987084502
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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