Feels slightly unfinished but in an interesting and appropriate way.
An alternate universe risks destroying its own timeline (or perhaps several timelines) in this new novel by the author of Allegiance (2013, etc.).
Steampunk novels are often set in or near London, and a cameo by Queen Victoria is practically de rigueur. So it’s a pleasure to encounter a steampunk work in which England has a decidedly diminished role. These four interwoven stories (three previously published elsewhere) take place between 1897 and 1914 in an alternate Europe where Éire (Ireland) is a powerful nation that also rules over a splintered England as well as Wales; Alba (Scotland) remains independent. Áine Lasairíona Devereaux, the young queen of Éire, aided by her most trusted agent, Cmdr. Aidrean Ó Deághaidh, struggles to establish political ascendancy over treacherous members of her own government, defuse Anglian rebels seeking independence, and build amicable relations with a turbulent Europe and Africa in the potential run-up to this universe’s equivalent of World War I. The kicker is that physicists and mathematicians in Éire and elsewhere have made significant progress in time-travel research. Dissidents of all sorts seek to turn that research into a weapon, creating fractures and disruptions that cause memory confusion, madness, destruction and death. The book ends on a note of hope, albeit an uncertain one: Given what we know of time travel, both negative and positive events can be overwritten.
Feels slightly unfinished but in an interesting and appropriate way.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3125-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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 new edition of the by now classic collection of affiliated stories which has already established its deserved longevity.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1963
ISBN: 055338256X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1963
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