An engaging triptych on the subjects of borders, climate change, and technology dependence.
A superstorm switches Earth’s magnetic poles and shuts down electrical power grids all over the world in this novel by Bronson, author of A Life Well-Lived (2018).
Laurie is the mother of two grown sons , and she feels “smothered by the familiarity” of day-to-day life as an empty nester. Accustomed to a lifestyle powered by “smart”devices, Laurie worries that her teaching job will eventually be made obsolete by technology. Halfway around the globe, Laurie’s eldest son, Brendan, teaches high schoolers in the (fictional) West African country of Loscoaya. Life there is “less complicated in many ways” because residents don’t depend on any sort of tech; however, Brendan knows well that “simple” doesn’t mean “easy.” Meanwhile, his younger brother, Josh, has hit rock bottom after running away from home years ago in an effort to forget a childhood trauma, and he wanders the Western United States. When Brendan comes back from Africa, he discovers that Laurie has fallen prey to a conspiracy theory that the world’s power will soon go out due to a magnetic shift in the poles. Disgusted by his parents’ hoarding of goods to prepare for an alleged apocalypse, Brendan notes that it will take more than canned goods to survive in a world without power—it will take drastic action and long-term adaptation to the environment, as the people of Loscoaya have done. Inevitably, when the superstorm arrives, there are things that even survivalists aren’t prepared for. Bronson manages to give the proceedings a sense of eerie familiarity, which has the effect of making her story utterly magnetic. Over the course of this book, there are a few instances of formulaic dialogue here and there, but the author also provides a number of details that will hit readers close to home in a narrative that takes place in what is essentially a thinly veiled version of our own everyday reality—complete with pandemics, border disputes, and an omnipresent media. As if to emphasize this point, Bronson makes this even clearer with the words of one of her characters: “This is not science fiction. This is real.”
An engaging triptych on the subjects of borders, climate change, and technology dependence.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
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 somber reflection on an increasingly hostile world.
As the world dies, the remnants of the patriarchy and their minions keep right on terrorizing the weak.
Caustically original in the same fashion as her chilling Tender Is the Flesh (2020), Bazterrica’s latest devises an end-of-the-world scenario with a Handmaid’s Tale vibe. The most palpable tragedy is that no matter how the world dies, women always seem to end up with the same sorry fortune. The story is set in an unknown wasteland where all the animals on Earth have perished, with callouts to a mysterious, poisonous haze and a collapsed world. Our narrator is a young woman relegated to sheltering in the House of the Sacred Sisterhood, an isolated, fundamentalist order subservient to an unseen, deity-like “He,” and divided into strict castes. Among these are the Enlightened, kept isolated from the rest of the order behind a mysterious black door; the Chosen, divine and devoted prophets who are ritually mutilated; and the servants marked by contamination, who sit just below the narrator’s caste, the unworthy young women. The story is a little tough to follow due to the narrator’s fragmented memory, not to mention lots of interruptions from the old ultraviolence and body horror. Although men are banned from the cloistered stronghold, it’s a relentlessly sadistic and violent society ruled by the Superior Sister, enforcer of His will and the instrument of punishment up to and including torture and death. The narrator is already mourning Helena, a spirited iconoclast who couldn’t survive under such oppression, when a new arrival named Lucía sparks fresh hope that may prove as fruitless as everything else in this bleak testament to suffering. As a subversion of expectations and an indictment of unchecked power, it’s unflinching and provocative, but readers expecting a satisfying denouement may be left wanting.
A somber reflection on an increasingly hostile world.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781668051887
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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