An imaginatively veiled political allegory that will please the most generous science-fiction fans.
A political thriller-cum-science fiction epic about an alien conspiracy and a president who unwittingly facilitates the destruction of the American dream.
In 1984 Myanmar, an extraterrestrial from a warfaring race known as the Magals landed on Earth and began a desperate fight with the United States. This creature abandoned his post on Earth sometime thereafter, but left his sons with his father, Gozaren. These sons, Gozer and Malhavco, have since joined the military and use their near-invincibility for special operations, presumably not for the protection and promotion of America’s interests abroad, but for dark, ulterior motives. This really isn’t such an unfamiliar America—the many wars on terror are still raging, the Bush administration had its two terms in power and there’s a newly elected black president in the White House. However, readers will have a difficult time believing that geopolitical history would have unfolded the same way as it has today given the occurrence of an interstellar war that decimated America’s armed forces. Another problem is the aliens themselves. Presumably they look humanoid as they navigate easily through the corridors of power, but who knows? At least initially, there are few clues or thoughtful explanations, and too much is assumed of the readership. This lack of setup early on leaves readers unable to place the characters in the world they inhabit. Malhavco is a genuine evil, though, and once the hard work of piecing together this universe is over, his brutality is as engaging as it is shocking—not satisfied with simply ruining humanity, he rapes women and kills any man that he can. Luckily for America, Gozer has another mode besides wanton evil and he aligns himself against his brother for the sake of the American dream. The novel’s climax is much stronger than its opening, but the journey between the two is fraught with the highs of the novel’s hard-boiled prose and the difficulties of its breezy exposition. Despite this, the thematic tug of war between nihilism and hope is pitch-perfect for millennial America, and the novel offers a message that boldly aligns on the side of optimism.
An imaginatively veiled political allegory that will please the most generous science-fiction fans.Pub Date: April 20, 2011
ISBN: 978-1434910059
Page Count: 202
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
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 celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.
After 1,000 years of peace, whispers that “the Nameless One will return” ignite the spark that sets the world order aflame.
No, the Nameless One is not a new nickname for Voldemort. Here, evil takes the shape of fire-breathing dragons—beasts that feed off chaos and imbalance—set on destroying humankind. The leader of these creatures, the Nameless One, has been trapped in the Abyss for ages after having been severely wounded by the sword Ascalon wielded by Galian Berethnet. These events brought about the current order: Virtudom, the kingdom set up by Berethnet, is a pious society that considers all dragons evil. In the East, dragons are worshiped as gods—but not the fire-breathing type. These dragons channel the power of water and are said to be born of stars. They forge a connection with humans by taking riders. In the South, an entirely different way of thinking exists. There, a society of female mages called the Priory worships the Mother. They don’t believe that the Berethnet line, continued by generations of queens, is the sacred key to keeping the Nameless One at bay. This means he could return—and soon. “Do you not see? It is a cycle.” The one thing uniting all corners of the world is fear. Representatives of each belief system—Queen Sabran the Ninth of Virtudom, hopeful dragon rider Tané of the East, and Ead Duryan, mage of the Priory from the South—are linked by the common goal of keeping the Nameless One trapped at any cost. This world of female warriors and leaders feels natural, and while there is a “chosen one” aspect to the tale, it’s far from the main point. Shannon’s depth of imagination and worldbuilding are impressive, as this 800-pager is filled not only with legend, but also with satisfying twists that turn legend on its head. Shannon isn’t new to this game of complex storytelling. Her Bone Season novels (The Song Rising, 2017, etc.) navigate a multilayered society of clairvoyants. Here, Shannon chooses a more traditional view of magic, where light fights against dark, earth against sky, and fire against water. Through these classic pairings, an entirely fresh and addicting tale is born. Shannon may favor detailed explication over keeping a steady pace, but the epic converging of plotlines at the end is enough to forgive.
A celebration of fantasy that melds modern ideology with classic tropes. More of these dragons, please.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63557-029-8
Page Count: 848
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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