McKenna’s (My Big Fake Irish Life, 2011) first foray into science fiction mixes romance with techno-thriller in a dystopian world where “thinking for yourself caused death.”
McKenna develops her central conceit uncomfortably well by extrapolating today’s world into 2095, when computers manage humanity via barcodes embedded in their wrists. The computers create a society we often wish for, wherein everyone is employed at a job perfectly suited to their abilities and temperament, and no one is sick or hungry (with a lifespan over 100 years and youth lasting into middle age); where parents custom-design their children, relationships are ideally balanced and war and environmental disaster are unknown. But the cost of this painless life is loss of passion and freedom. Fortunately, groups of individualists have withdrawn to live the old-fashioned way with all its sufferings. These folks, along with an isolated group of psychics and sages, covertly work against the governing computers to stop them from reducing humanity to a slave race and stealing our physiology in order to create a super-race of computer-humans. The opposing forces are destined to battle in an uprising predicted by the sages since 1971. One preordained person from each culture—beautiful Britannia from the ideal society, rugged John from the primitive outcasts and innocent but gifted Kendall from the psychic students—must combine their special talents in a preemptive strike to trigger Armageddon, although none of the sages can foresee who wins. McKenna tells her story in alternating voices, weaving them together from a startling prologue to a predictable ending in a calm and steady voice of her own that suggests the machine world she envisions. This voice beautifully portrays the chilling future but flattens out characters and action into clichés. The book is further weakened by amateurish production, including repeat typos, incorrect grammar and usage and simple formatting bloopers. Nevertheless, the book is a compelling story that pulls the reader along while feeling like a screenplay disguised as a novel. It begs for richer treatment, which perhaps McKenna will tackle in a sequel. Despite some flaws, McKenna delivers a fascinating look into a chilling future firmly rooted in our present.
Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1466331433
Page Count: 302
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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