A creative and brisk meditation on a tech-obsessed society.
Ray (Kecia’s Secret: Revised, 2017, etc.) delivers a sci-fi novel about a murderous quest for control in the world of big business.
In the opening pages of this loose, paranoid tale, a number of businesspeople attend a meeting in New York City. Although the purpose of the gathering is vague, it’s clearly not a social event; those assembled “could care less about each other, it was all about accumulating more wealth.” Later, they come up with a plan to murder an as-yet-undiscovered lyricist and steal his or her brain. The victim, they say, must be “more than a poet, more than a rapper, with a limitless imagination,” and once the brain is in their possession, they plan to connect it to a computer for sinister purposes. Meanwhile, all over the world, people are willingly being implanted with radio-frequency identification chips—an action that the first-person omniscient narrator says will “be their doom,” although the reasons why aren’t immediately clear. What is clear, though, is that those in control seek to tighten their grip on the population through ever-evolving means. Is there any room for hope in a world that relinquishes more and more of its freedom to technology? The story waxes on a wide range of subjects, from cryogenics to police shootings to cloning, as it ruminates on current and near-future events. Along the way, this brief book maintains a free-wheeling and meandering style. The plot gets a bit thin at times, and the characters tend to be flat and underdeveloped (such as the ever-greedy businessman Jack Sloan). That said, Ray is at his best when he’s examining his story’s strangest and most conspiratorial elements. He also entertains its sci-fi concepts briefly enough that they don’t become tiresome, such as the fact that any present-day civilian can travel to outer space—as long as they have enough money. His economical style allows the book to move freely and pointedly toward his broader theme that “there seem to be no limits to the unthinkable acts that mankind conjures up.” Indeed, the story’s ending is indisputably fantastical.
A creative and brisk meditation on a tech-obsessed society.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Rise Above
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2017
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 first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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