Another adventure set in the medium-future universe of Rimrunners and Cyteen; here, the action takes place in the solar system's asteroid belt, where independent miners are slowly being squeezed out by the predatory mining consortium ASTEX. Prospecting partners Morrie Bird, the old hand who owns the ship, and young, hotheaded pilot Ben Pollard encounter a wrecked, tumbling ship and discover aboard a lone survivor, Dekker, babbling and traumatized by whatever happened to him and by the loss of his partner. Hoping for salvage rights, Ben and Bird tow the hulk back to Base, and turn Dekker over to the medics. But, despite company denials, soon it emerges that at least part of Dekker's wild claims (an unreported collision, claim-jumping, a sinister plot) are true. Then, Dekker's partner's body turns up, bizarrely flung into a recovery orbit along with ores mined from a huge rock the company maintains doesn't exist. Teaming up with influential female miners Meg and Sal, Bird, Ben, and Dekker contrive to blow the lid off a massive coverup that involves ASTEX and public figures as distant as the President of Earth. Taut, gripping, realistic work, with Cherryh taking a stab at character development, and bringing her agreeably complex plot to a satisfying if unsurprising conclusion.
Pub Date: June 17, 1991
ISBN: 0446362239
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1991
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 new edition of the by now classic collection of affiliated stories which has already established its deserved longevity.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1963
ISBN: 055338256X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1963
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