Another rip-roaring, deeply paranoid thriller about the reasons to fear the future.
The world teeters on the brink of destruction once more in this spiritual sequel set in the same world as Wendig’s wetwork horror story Zer0es (2015).
After the events of the last novel, FBI Agent Hollis Copper is understandably spooked by a world that’s becoming increasingly threatened by expanding technology. To help him push back against the things going bump in the night, he’s seconded futurist Hannah Stander to his department to help shine a light on bleeding-edge tech gone awry. She’s suitably intrigued when he calls her with a dilemma: “I’ve got a cabin on the lake with more than a thousand dead bodies in it....Think of it like a riddle.” What she finds in rural New York is a dead man with no skin, surrounded by hundreds of dead ants. Hannah’s investigation leads her to Ez Choi, a punk-rock Asian-American entomologist. Ez discovers that the ants weren’t just unleashed, but engineered, and they bear the same genetic markers employed by biotech billionaire Einar Geirsson, a reclusive Icelandic billionaire operating a secret biotech lab off the coast of Hawaii. If the setup sounds very Crichton-esque, it is, but Wendig puts his own stamp on this propulsive techno-thriller with his signature action set pieces, a deeply damaged heroine, and a pervasive threat that will give all but the most hardened readers the creepy-crawlies. The book makes some very salient points about the ethics of genetic engineering but doesn’t forego action as the book culminates in a biological catastrophe, not to mention a deadly cat-and-mouse chase on the treacherous Kalalau Trail on the North Shore of Kauai. Hannah Stander is a standout heroine—raised by survivalists and gifted with an unparalleled ability for predictive analysis. Think Thomas Harris’ Will Graham and Clarice Starling rolled into one and pitched on the knife’s edge of a scenario that makes Jurassic Park look like a carnival ride.
Another rip-roaring, deeply paranoid thriller about the reasons to fear the future.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-235157-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 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
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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