A stirring adventure tale that adds considerable shock and awe to a familiar setup.
In Mackay’s debut military–SF series starter, an endangered alien race makes contact with Earth and asks its inhabitants for a favor.
In 2020, humanity has their first encounter with intergalactic aliens. Lumenarians are humanoid quasi-reptiles who are quite humanlike in their ways and attitudes, and they generously share their technology with Earth. However, they also ask humans for a big favor in return. Their ancient race—which has forgotten its history due to computer-memory failure—is fighting a war against a mysterious, vicious, armor-plated army called the Forsaken, who are conquering and exterminating their distant colonies. The Lumenarians have found that other space-traveling races are mostly peaceful but that technologically primitive humans are a warlike species—so they ask for a volunteer human army to mount an offensive campaign. A group of human veterans and adventure-seekers sign up for the job, and the story’s narration splits between three characters: Will Reach, an alcoholic, physically and psychologically scarred Afghanistan veteran, who’s fitted with cybernetic Lumenarian implants and tactical tech; Sarah Li, an orphaned science genius with command skills who signs up with her brother; and “Arthur,” a prominent Lumenarian who has many secrets. The novel’s scenario isn’t original; John Ringo’s Legacy of the Aldenata series, among other books, has depicted Earth natives serving as military support for embattled extraterrestrials. Mackay takes this premise back to basic training in a big way, however, addressing soldiers’ PTSD and malaise (Joe Haldeman’s classic 1974 novel The Forever War is a stated influence) and their combat strategy (à la Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 novel Starship Troopers). There’s also some hard–SF physics when Sarah takes over narration duties. In addition to plenty of action, Mackay adds the timely notion of a terroristic human-supremacist movement and reveals the existence of a similar group among the Lumenarians. As the Samuel Taylor Coleridge–inspired title might signify, there are also several literary shout-outs—and a few Lucasfilm hat tips, as well.
A stirring adventure tale that adds considerable shock and awe to a familiar setup.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-5255-6727-8
Page Count: 469
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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