An absorbing but ultimately underwhelming yarn that patiently builds on existing foundations without venturing a conclusion...
Espionage and Cold War paranoia prevail as near-future governments in alternate timelines test one another’s defenses and capabilities in this opening installment of a science-fiction trilogy and sequel to the six-volume Merchant Princes series (The Trade of Queens, 2010, etc.)
The previous series focused on trade, smuggling, and the power politics of godfather-style families across alternate timelines. Here the USA (not ours, but close) of timeline No. 2 has become a hypertrophied military-police/surveillance/espionage state (“President Rumsfeld” tells you all you need to know). In the less technologically advanced timeline No. 3, the revolutionary North American Commonwealth is locked in a nuclear standoff with the vast French empire. Because of a nuclear attack that destroyed Washington (and for other, even more alarming, reasons), the USA desperately wants to learn what’s happening there. A committee headed by generic cold warrior Col. Smith recruits people, called world-walkers, who possess the ability to cross between timelines in latent form, intending to awaken their abilities and send them into timeline No. 3 as spies. The guinea pig is Rita Douglas, estranged daughter (though it’s hugely more involved than that) of Miriam Beckstein, the prime mover of the prior series who, fearing the USA’s power, now guides the rapid technological development of the Commonwealth. This novel and its prequels are, for Stross, almost defiantly orthodox in structure (see the narrative pyrotechnics of Rule 34, for instance) and stately in development. Still, his writing is as complex and subtle as ever, so series newcomers may well need to absorb the first 200 pages before the sociological and political implications fully emerge. Which viewpoint readers identify with, and there’s plenty of scope for ambiguity, will depend mostly on what they themselves bring along.
An absorbing but ultimately underwhelming yarn that patiently builds on existing foundations without venturing a conclusion or even a cliffhanger.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3756-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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