An influx of antagonists nearly upstages the hero, but it’s fun to watch crooks do what they do best.
Attorney Jack McManus’ new gig at the Department of Justice finds him at the Shaolin Monastery searching for the culprits behind airplane crashes in Carson’s (Palmdale, 2011, etc.) latest thriller.
The DOJ unfairly booted out Jack long ago, but now it wants him back. He leaves his San Francisco office and moves to Boston, with a new DOJ title, director of international operations. His first task is to locate those responsible for hacking navigational computers to crash planes last year, including hacker Ahmed Munuza and ringleader Ringo “Hyacinth” Rosselier. Jack and lawyer pal Ernie Aftergood get a lead on Ahmed at a monastery in China. Ahmed, however, may be doing more than hiding out: local Syrians in Chengdu are showing up at hospitals with fewer organs. Hyacinth, meanwhile, is also looking for Ahmed, believing the hacker and terrorist group the Muslim Brotherhood, which played a part in the aircraft assaults, tried to kill him. The Brotherhood further complicates matters by sending a trio of assassins to Chengdu, hoping to get in on the organ-trafficking scheme. Jack knows that thwarting the organ harvesters will bring the DOJ closer to Hyacinth and Ahmed. But when a couple of SEALs, tagging along to protect Jack and Ernie, turn up decapitated, the two attorneys realize they’re not safe. The recurring protagonist takes a back seat for much of this series entry; he’s sometimes merely an observer, literally standing back and watching villains take out other villains. And while Jack’s predominantly clear of danger (other soldiers replace those SEALs), he’s unmistakably in peril by the rousing final act. There are likewise quite a few surprises, like the sudden disappearance of a character and a shocking incident near the end of the book. But the bevy of baddies remains the story’s electrifying centerpiece: some want revenge, others want to hijack the organ harvesting, and all are willing to deceive/kill to get what they want. The story’s likely aimed at readers who’ve perused the heavily tied-in series opener, but Carson provides enough back story for those unfamiliar with Jack’s previous exploits.
An influx of antagonists nearly upstages the hero, but it’s fun to watch crooks do what they do best.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 161
Publisher: KaleBoy Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 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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