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
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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