A rousing SF tale that stars a warrior hero with a strong moral center.
A freelance armed security guard in a post-apocalyptic North America tries not to lose his humanity—or his life—as he becomes embroiled in violent action against the power-hungry, ruling “Network.”
Fisher’s debut SF combat novel has a hero in Mark Northfield, a former military man who survived a vaguely described attack on the United States 10 years earlier that effectively destroyed most of the world’s civilization. The globe is shrouded in a deadly yellow atmosphere that kills in seconds. But in North America, populations manage to survive in cities ruthlessly overseen by the Network, an organization that outfits people (the ones who can pay, anyhow) with breathing masks and filters. Haunted by recurring thoughts of his dead young wife and the horrors he has seen, Northfield dwells on the dangerous outskirts of Network territory, taking occasional mercenary gigs to provide security escorts from community to community. He is especially on guard against “Yellowbacks,” a cultlike bandit gang with its own respiratory apparatuses. Yet even in battle, Northfield still strives for altruism and ethical behavior—one of the few to do so in a savage milieu. Then, he is tricked into accepting a Network task to assassinate a stranger—to refuse the job means Northfield's elimination by the dictatorship’s unsubtly named “Death Corps.” It is no surprise when Northfield learns his target happens to be no ordinary, enemy-of-the-state dissident but one who holds the key to reversing the deadly climate change (the lethal airborne toxin is not chemical but rather a nanotechnology smart weapon). Once Northfield decides which side he is on and where to go, the plot becomes a rather basic A to B mission, albeit with much cinematic action and scintillating John Woo–style gun battles. And the hero, a conscience-wracked Lutheran, argues at length with other characters or in interior monologues with his beloved’s memory and a silent Almighty about moral equivalency, mercy, and the right thing to do. (“Everyone’s a dog that eats each other out here,” a man says to Northfield. “Sometimes you don’t have a choice in it all. Sometimes doing bad things is what you gotta do.”) Even if the straightforward plot makes few deviations, newcomer Fisher’s prose is sure-footed, and the combo of God, guts, and guns should especially appeal to readers of “prepper” SF.
A rousing SF tale that stars a warrior hero with a strong moral center.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7923-4656-9
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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 deceptively quiet beginning rockets to a thrilling finish, preparing us for the next volume’s undoubtedly explosive finale.
The third installment of a necromantic science-fantasy series continues working at puzzles of identity and the meaning of loyalty.
Previously (Gideon the Ninth, 2019; Harrow the Ninth, 2020), sullen but brilliant necromancer Harrowhark consumed the soul of Gideon, her foulmouthed cavalier, to become a Lyctor, a semi-immortal officer in the Emperor Undying’s court. In a desperate attempt to preserve Gideon’s identity, Harrow deliberately erased the other woman from her memories, leaving herself confused to the point of delusion, unable to access her full powers, and vulnerable to enemies both within and without the Emperor’s court. This novel introduces Nona, a sweet but extraordinarily naïve young woman who appears to be in Harrowhark’s body but with Gideon’s golden eyes, lacking both necromantic abilities and any memories prior to six months ago. Nona’s been happy despite her precarious living situation in a war-torn city threatened by the necromantic Houses and their foe, the Blood of Eden. Unfortunately, what fragile peace she has cannot last, and everything depends on recovering Nona’s memories and returning to Harrowhark’s home in the Ninth House, there to finally release the deadly threat lurking in the Locked Tomb. But who is Nona, really: Harrowhark, Gideon, a blend of both young women…or someone else entirely? (The reader will figure it out long before the characters do.) Meanwhile, the Emperor and Harrowhark meet in dreams, where he recounts events of 10,000 years ago, when, as a newly fledged necromancer, his conflict with the corrupt trillionaires who planned to escape the dying Earth and leave the remaining billions to perish led to nuclear apocalypse. It’s pretty gutsy of Muir to write two books in a row about amnesiac characters, particularly when it may very well be the same character experiencing a different form of amnesia in each. This work initially reads like a strange interlude from the series, devoted to Nona’s odd but essentially quotidian routine in the midst of war, riot, and general chaos. But the story gradually gathers speed, and it’s all in service to a deeper plot. It is unfortunate that the demands of that plot mean we’ve gotten a considerably smaller dose of Gideon’s defiantly crude, riotously flouncy behavior in the two books subsequent to the one which bears her name.
A deceptively quiet beginning rockets to a thrilling finish, preparing us for the next volume’s undoubtedly explosive finale.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-25-085411-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Tordotcom
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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