A Christian-leaning science thriller that stays on the mild side until it produces a sudden sting.
A woman once deliberately inflicted with transplanted memories by a treacherous researcher faces high-tech bodily possession by a dead man.
The Goddards (Living Memories, 2013), husband-and-wife authors, here birth a sequel to their debut borderline-sci-fi novel, with intrigue and nastiness above and beyond the call of science at the University of Mississippi. Heather McHann was once cruelly turned into a human “guinea pig” by her now-dead boyfriend, Gregory “Dex” Poindexter, a college researcher using cutting-edge computer techniques. He unethically manipulated human subjects in treating trauma and PTSD by transferring memories from one person to another. The method led to “infective” mind control and crimes committed by the helpless Heather at Dex’s behest. Three years later, despite her negative past experiences, personal trainer Heather is fascinated with the science and starts working part time in the Sleep and Memory Unit at Ole Miss. She re-encounters previous subjects of Dex’s malice—chiefly troubled teenager Samantha Mathis. But Heather also gets accosted and threatened by a suspiciously tweedy assailant in corporate shakedowns aimed at her and Samantha by big pharma, which is prodding into Dex’s potentially profitable secrets. But there’s more. Heather discovers a data device left by Dex in anticipation of his demise with a video file labeled “entire essence.” Displaying the poor sense exhibited by teens in those slasher movies who go wandering into dark places alone, she views the encoded images, setting the stage for a twist on the theme of spiritual possession. The Ole Miss campus turns out to be an atypical and refreshing locale for genre fiction. The authors infuse their thriller with a discernible Christian worldview, though it is less preachy than readers might expect. Characters argue about evidence for the existence of souls, say grace before meals, and seldom spout anything that goes beyond mild profanity. Sexual suggestiveness stays PG, if even that (no kinky stuff for a premise based on a bad guy reviving in a 29-year-old beauty’s gym-toned body). Samantha keeps having encounters with “Benji,” a sort of holy fool nobody else seems able to perceive, who quotes Bible references and warns against evil in a Yoda/Gollum/Clarence the angel manner. Science and technology speculation might have been served in the heady doses that bestselling novelist Michael Crichton generated in his books, but the authors pull away from that. (And they are notably ahead of Crichton in the characterizations, with the exception of the noncorporeal Dex, who remains a pretty pallid rotter.) Only in the twist finale does the storyline echo such memorable sci-fi short fiction entries on similar themes, like Brian W. Aldiss’ “Let’s Be Frank” and Robert Bloch’s grim “Forever and Amen,” sharply turning away from the virtuous stuff offered before it.
A Christian-leaning science thriller that stays on the mild side until it produces a sudden sting.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-60489-226-0
Page Count: 201
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2019
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
Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.
Strange and fascinating alien-contact yarn, the first of a trilogy from China’s most celebrated science-fiction author.
In 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, young physicist Ye Wenjie helplessly watches as fanatical Red Guards beat her father to death. She ends up in a remote re-education (i.e. forced labor) camp not far from an imposing, top secret military installation called Red Coast Base. Eventually, Ye comes to work at Red Coast as a lowly technician, but what really goes on there? Weapons research, certainly, but is it also listening for signals from space—maybe even signaling in return? Another thread picks up the story 40 years later, when nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao and thuggish but perceptive policeman Shi Qiang, summoned by a top-secret international (!) military commission, learn of a war so secret and mysterious that the military officers will give no details. Of more immediate concern is a series of inexplicable deaths, all prominent scientists, including the suicide of Yang Dong, the physicist daughter of Ye Wenjie; the scientists were involved with the shadowy group Frontiers of Science. Wang agrees to join the group and investigate and soon must confront events that seem to defy the laws of physics. He also logs on to a highly sophisticated virtual reality game called “Three Body,” set on a planet whose unpredictable and often deadly environment alternates between Stable times and Chaotic times. And he meets Ye Wenjie, rehabilitated and now a retired professor. Ye begins to tell Wang what happened more than 40 years ago. Jaw-dropping revelations build to a stunning conclusion. In concept and development, it resembles top-notch Arthur C. Clarke or Larry Niven but with a perspective—plots, mysteries, conspiracies, murders, revelations and all—embedded in a culture and politic dramatically unfamiliar to most readers in the West, conveniently illuminated with footnotes courtesy of translator Liu.
Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7653-7706-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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