An intriguing, if somewhat vague, speculative tale.
A mysterious story about a surreal city from Russian science-fiction masters the Strugatsky brothers, translated into English for the first time.
Andrei is a Soviet astronomer from the 1950s. He now works as a trash collector, but he no longer lives in the USSR—or in the 1950s. Instead, he lives in an unknown time in the City, a strange place where the sun is extinguished like a lamp each night. The City is bordered on one side by an impossibly high wall and on the other side, by an abyss. Within these confines, troops of baboons appear out of nowhere, and sinister buildings appear and disappear at will—or do they? An inscrutable group called the Mentors has populated the City with people they’ve extracted from 20th-century times and places: Fritz, for example, was a German soldier in World War II, Selma was from 1970s Sweden, and Donald was an American college professor in the ’60s. They’ve all been brought to the City to participate in the Experiment, but no one knows precisely what its goal is. In successive episodes, the book follows Andrei as he’s shifted from job to job: first, he’s a diligent trash collector, then a police investigator, a senior editor of one of the City’s newspapers, a counselor to the president, and, finally, a soldier at war, before he reaches a surprising end. Most of the book’s action, if it can be called that, consists of people sitting around together and talking (and, more often than not, drinking). However, many readers will find it psychologically gripping to puzzle over what the City is and what will become of Andrei, although others may be frustrated by the lack of resolution. In the foreword by fellow Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky, he points out that Soviet science fiction “transformed into a means for at least hinting at the true state of affairs.” Unfortunately, the story only hints, without ever fully explaining, and readers unversed in Soviet politics may feel as though they are missing out on deeper meanings. That said, it doesn’t detract from what’s otherwise a thought-provoking read.
An intriguing, if somewhat vague, speculative tale.Pub Date: July 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61373-596-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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