A vibrant, muckraking mystery that will be difficult to forget.
A field biologist dispatched to Namibia to stop ivory smugglers uncovers a threat to elephants (and humans) “more menacing than lions” in this debut novel.
After writing a pack of award-winning nonfiction books about elephants for children (A Baby Elephant in the Wild, 2014, etc.) as well as for adults (Elephant Don: The Politics of a Pachyderm Posse, 2015, etc.), O’Connell enters uncharted territory with her atmospheric mystery. This book for grown-ups introduces Wildlife Investigation Agency field biologist Catherin Sohon, the “eyes and ears only” participant in a census of the regional pachyderm population. Her actual mission is “to figure out who the players were in the local ivory trade.” Her job—counting the elephants and looking for signs of poachers—seems “pretty straightforward.” But on her arrival, she comes across a Mercedes sedan with four slaughtered bodies, including one whose brain has been removed. A fish out of water—she is “an American bloody do-gooder” and a woman—she initially runs afoul of Jon Baggs, head of the local Ministry of Land and Conservation, who resents her presence. “You said you were a pilot, not a bloody detective,” he says, dismissing her. Through the capable and committed Sohon, O’Connell offers both panoramic and “ground level” perspectives of an epidemic that threatens to decimate an animal population (100 elephants are killed in Africa on a daily basis, Sohon notes). O’Connell effectively maps out the usual and unusual suspects (a witch doctor) and dramatizes the institutional corruption, greed, and overwhelmed bureaucracy that hinder rescue. The anger and outrage are palpable, but not in a way that comes off as didactic. Less effective is Sohon’s back story. She has in part come to Namibia to grieve and “get my footing back” following the death of her fiance, who was killed by a buffalo. O’Connell is on firmer ground authentically capturing an Africa that is both “breathtaking and revolting,” where buzzing flies are “the first responders to an accident,” baboons caterwaul to ward off predatory leopards, and young elephant calves comically learn to control their limp trunks.
A vibrant, muckraking mystery that will be difficult to forget.Pub Date: April 7, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Alibi/Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2016
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
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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