A haunted story about unfinished lives, the persistence of hope, and the consequences of grief without end.
Two government agents head to the American heartland to investigate a resurrection.
Hudson brings refreshing common sense and keen intelligence to this fantastical tale about the afterlife and what its proximity can do to a community’s sanity. In this grim near future, human beings have begun spontaneously “popping” out of existence, Rapture-style, with no warning and no predictability. Much like Ben Winters in his Last Policeman series of existential detective novels, Hudson eschews spectacle for the cold comfort of figuring out how people behave at the end of the world, while casually offering startling evidence of how society has changed, from loosened sexual mores to self-driving cars. Mostly, it’s a slow, sad apocalypse drifting toward human extinction. It’s no wonder Harvey Ellis is a bit of a sad sack, working the night shift for the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs and mourning his long-absent fiancée. Far from being elite agents, he and his colleagues are more like civil servants, assigned to verify Absences and hand out government stipends. But when a woman long believed “popped” suddenly reappears in the small town of Dawnville, Kansas, Harvey and his skeptical partner, Shonda Erins, are sent out to get her story straight. Long after her childhood disappearance from a school talent show, Gabby Reyes claims to have returned from wherever it is people have been going, despite a disheartening lack of biometric evidence. She spins a wild story of materializing in a transitional interdimensional community dubbed “Strangertown,” from which she managed to make her metaphysical way home. A story with impossible-to-fill holes gets even more tangled when Shonda discovers a missing investigator with a striking similarity to their suspect. Now, what happens when the structures that underpin human belief are presented with a real mystery? That’s the real question, even if the answer isn’t entirely unexpected.
A haunted story about unfinished lives, the persistence of hope, and the consequences of grief without end.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781641297585
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
