The Matrix meets Dante’s Inferno in an overloaded (Holy) ghost story.
In Thomassen’s unwieldy sci-fi debut, technology goes berserk and threatens to enslave the human race.
On the brink of an invention capable of changing the world forever, a British “doctor-engineer in the field of energy safety,” Roger Hamlock, dies in a head-on collision while driving his Ford Tacoma to work. At first, he thinks it’s just a dream, but when he encounters an otherworldly female presence, or “Watcher,” named Pantha Maria, he begins an adventure to find his killers, part of a worldwide mafia, led by “His Holiness BIG Pa, the Millennium Dragon, Antichrist personified,” seeking to control the world by brainwashing the human race. Reincarnated in the body of a Norwegian infant named Roger Amundsen, Roger grows up to study astrophysics and, at the age of 25, sets out to fulfill his mission to destroy Holochryne, a holographic cyborg intent on annihilating mankind through World War III. From an abyss below the Caribbean island of Cram, the “transparent house-sized robot” controls BIG Pa and the marauding armies of the Moogoo Empire, led by Yuk Chow and the general of New Russia. Joined in his battle by a “supergroup of well-trained clairvoyants,” Roger journeys through this dreamlike world, “dead as a salted herring,” and learns the true meaning of life. Woven through his winding tale of redemption are reflections on the true identity of UFOs, electromagnetic hypersensitivity, “Christ consciousness” and the Holy Spirit as an “information channel.” Thomassen balances precariously between derivative sci-fi and Christian dogma. Numerous characters are introduced; many turn out to be irrelevant, many simply confusing. The narrator detracts from the plot by engaging in supremely complex subjects. Acknowledging the abundance of scientific jargon, his own fantastic creations and endless religious references, Thomassen provides a detailed 9-page glossary. “Physical reality is a form of virtual reality,” one character wisely observes. “You cannot see the quantum soup” that holds everything together. Perhaps that’s Thomassen’s main problem: He fails to establish at least one reality for the reader to believe in.
The Matrix meets Dante’s Inferno in an overloaded (Holy) ghost story.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-1477229781
Page Count: 336
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2013
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
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
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