by Austin Grossman ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2013
While Grossman’s imagination is fertile, the narrative is overly discursive and rambling.
Calling all video gamers...here’s a novel about designing, playing and ultimately becoming obsessed with fantasy and science-fiction games.
The book involves two time periods: the halcyon early days of gaming, from 16-bit to 64-bit Commodore computing, and the contemporary world of realistic effects and virtual reality. One of the more significant questions the early pioneers wrestled with was, which is more important, the narrative arc of a story or graphics technology? While most opted for the former, one of the problems is that unpredictable and sometimes untoward things can and do happen in the world of games. Russell, the narrator of the story, had originally been one of the self-professed nerds who started writing code and creating games at a young age. He even graduated from college and had a year of law school before “dropping out” and joining some of his old friends at Black Arts games. The two leaders of this company were Simon, now deceased, and Darren, both held in awe by the gaming community. Simon was a true genius, with perfect scores on his SATs. Disdaining college, Simon developed a series of games that Russell discovers in a desk drawer. Meanwhile, Darren breaks away from Black Arts and takes most of the talent with him, leaving the inexperienced Russell in charge of designing a game that needs to be a blockbuster. Fantasy and reality get confused when Russell falls in love with a character on the screen. But, as he points out, why not? After all, she’s “smart and confident and had amazing hair, and she was a princess.” Reality is ever so much duller. While Russell becomes more and more obsessed with tracing Simon’s legacy through the games he discovers, he begins to get equally involved in the game he’s designing—and only negative things can come from this.
While Grossman’s imagination is fertile, the narrative is overly discursive and rambling.Pub Date: April 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-19853-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
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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 Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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