Direct sequel to Heavy Time (1991) and part of Cherryh's medium-future Company Wars spacefaring saga (Cyteen, etc.) about a thoroughly disunited Solar System facing invasion by genetically engineered superman. Now serving with the United Defense Command fleet, ex-Belter and former spaceminer Ben Pollard is poised to grab the Earth-based job he has long coveted—when abruptly he is reassigned to the remote space station Sol Two. Seems that a former shipmate, the apparently jinxed Paul Dekker, has gone more or less insane after an "accident" and has named Ben as next of kin! Protesting, Ben interviews Dekker, and realizes that some sort of coverup is going on. Dekker was working on a top-secret military project rife with rivalries and backbiting. Ben, accepting his situation, investigates; helped by tough Belter ex-miners and former shipmates Sal and Meg, he exposes a furious tangle of politicking and power-struggling among Earth's top military brass, powerful family-connected politicians, and the ubiquitous Earth Company. Characters well up to par, and the backdrop as solid as ever—but the plot, slow to develop and desperately short of propellant, quickly subsides into flabby confusion. A disappointment after sparkling work last time out.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 0446364517
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1992
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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