by Alfred Wellnitz ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 29, 2010
A riveting techno-thriller with a compelling human drama at its core.
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In this dark, intricate thriller, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter squaring off against a fascist American government of the near future.
It’s 2033 and the gold bugs have been proven right: too much quantitative easing has produced hyperinflation, the collapse of the American economy and the breakup of the United States into regional successor regimes. The most odious of these is the Federated States, a white supremacist dictatorship in the Old South that relegates blacks, Latinos and Asians to second-class citizenship. After his girlfriend is shot by soldiers during a peaceful protest, Jim Reed, a black lawyer from Atlanta, joins up with a multiracial resistance organization called the Freedom Legion and discovers his knack for masterminding terrorist spectaculars. Hotel bombings and guerrilla attacks provoke more repression; the Federated States initiates an Ultimate Solution to rid its territory of blacks, and Jim and his comrades conceive a monumental strike to decapitate the dictatorship. Wellnitz plays on strands of both left- and right-wing paranoia but manages to make his lurid scenario both believable and exciting. His fictive world has a down-at-the-heels desperation that brings an ugly, all-American racism bubbling to the surface. The well-paced plot regales readers with nerve-wracking action scenes, serpentine intrigues and tense, engrossing procedural as Freedom Legion operatives work out the mechanics of procuring and deploying weapons of mass destruction. Wellnitz’s sharply drawn characters are cool, hardened men and women, but they are also three-dimensional people wracked with misgivings and emotional conflicts. Their world is an intensified but all too familiar version of our own, and we can’t help sympathizing with them even as they undertake the most extreme—even monstrous—measures to wrench it back to sanity.
A riveting techno-thriller with a compelling human drama at its core.Pub Date: July 29, 2010
ISBN: 978-0595501717
Page Count: 324
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2010
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 Samantha Shannon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 2019
A celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.
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New York Times Bestseller
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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