An intriguing series starter that’s packed with colorful characters and detail.
In Vega’s (Majesty’s Offspring, 2011) action-packed fantasy, an American war veteran is recruited for an agency that tracks souls and battles for the fate of the universe.
In 1933, Willem Maddock is unemployed despite the flying expertise that he gained as a pilot during the Great War. Luckily, he meets Samantha Black, who offers him a job, albeit a peculiar one. Black is the director of the Census, a secret government agency that’s described as “something like an embassy between the living and dead.” Maddock initially teams up with Agent Wolfe to help Elder Quorum, the authority in the Spirit Realm, where most souls live. Maddock and Wolfe act as Census Enforcers, rounding up souls that escaped during an accident long ago. Their mission takes them to Germany in 1939 to battle Nazis as well as such supernatural creatures as red-eyed, taloned Rattlers, 9-foot-tall Furies, and souls that have turned into demons. They also aim to stop a sinister scheme to destroy the Sacred Tree, which will effectively end all reincarnation. That’s the first step in a process that will allow the “Oppressor,” aka Lucifer, to walk the Earth, and if the godlike Presence sees evil gaining the upper hand, it may “reset” the entire universe. Vega’s dense tale, the first in a planned series, ably fuses elements of religion with Norse and Greek mythologies. The hefty backstories involve one of Maddock’s past lives as well as what led to the aforementioned accident. The author keeps the narrative moving briskly toward an elaborate final act that’s rife with double-crossings and deception. The action scenes are entertaining and memorable: “Sizzling heads and limbs littered the ground. Some soldiers managed to get away, yelling and screaming, but the flames continued to eat them.” Maddock, however, isn’t the most likable protagonist, and although his 1930s-style vernacular is mostly fun, it also includes talking down to his formidable boss by calling her “doll.”
An intriguing series starter that’s packed with colorful characters and detail.Pub Date: May 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5348-3873-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2019
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
A celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.
After 1,000 years of peace, whispers that “the Nameless One will return” ignite the spark that sets the world order aflame.
No, the Nameless One is not a new nickname for Voldemort. Here, evil takes the shape of fire-breathing dragons—beasts that feed off chaos and imbalance—set on destroying humankind. The leader of these creatures, the Nameless One, has been trapped in the Abyss for ages after having been severely wounded by the sword Ascalon wielded by Galian Berethnet. These events brought about the current order: Virtudom, the kingdom set up by Berethnet, is a pious society that considers all dragons evil. In the East, dragons are worshiped as gods—but not the fire-breathing type. These dragons channel the power of water and are said to be born of stars. They forge a connection with humans by taking riders. In the South, an entirely different way of thinking exists. There, a society of female mages called the Priory worships the Mother. They don’t believe that the Berethnet line, continued by generations of queens, is the sacred key to keeping the Nameless One at bay. This means he could return—and soon. “Do you not see? It is a cycle.” The one thing uniting all corners of the world is fear. Representatives of each belief system—Queen Sabran the Ninth of Virtudom, hopeful dragon rider Tané of the East, and Ead Duryan, mage of the Priory from the South—are linked by the common goal of keeping the Nameless One trapped at any cost. This world of female warriors and leaders feels natural, and while there is a “chosen one” aspect to the tale, it’s far from the main point. Shannon’s depth of imagination and worldbuilding are impressive, as this 800-pager is filled not only with legend, but also with satisfying twists that turn legend on its head. Shannon isn’t new to this game of complex storytelling. Her Bone Season novels (The Song Rising, 2017, etc.) navigate a multilayered society of clairvoyants. Here, Shannon chooses a more traditional view of magic, where light fights against dark, earth against sky, and fire against water. Through these classic pairings, an entirely fresh and addicting tale is born. Shannon may favor detailed explication over keeping a steady pace, but the epic converging of plotlines at the end is enough to forgive.
A celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63557-029-8
Page Count: 848
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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